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gleaves whitney executive director of the gerald r. ford presidential foundation to the podium to introduce tonight speaker. gleaves. [applause] >> as joel just said, we are back. look at this. this is great of all these people in the auditorium after aller those months of covid. i applaud you for being here. you came for a great program this evening. as you all know we've been bringing bilbray is back to grand rapids west michigan for manyd years, almost two decade. i'll introduce a minute minute but first i want to welcome our c-span, are viewing audience to avoid to welcome all of you who are here in person. i think we have some trustees from the gerald r. ford presidential foundation to recognize. i think i see bob hooker hi and j.c. is here. we have one of the ford president ford family members, greg ford, a nephew of resident mrs. four. welcome.

always glad you are here. oh had an applaud, absolutely. [applause]e] >> now, those of you who have been to this did before know that i have tried every which way possible humanly possible to introduce bill in a i new way. so one year in fact, we used is haiku poetry. remember that your? haiku poetry, because he's the author of a lot of haiku poetry that ended up in a book. another year we look at, this was rich, we looked at a student evaluations. i have never managed in the two decades i have known bill to embarrass him in a good-natured way, and kelly read the last student evaluation from a young woman who said, and you know the best thing the sides of the great storytelling, he's hot. [laughing] so i've run out of ideas for

introducing him. so here's what i would like to do. you all know bill. you've been coming back, 90%, how many of you have heard bill in person? yeah, so i'm going to ask you the questions. where does h. w. brands teach? university of texas at austin.he how many books has he written? a million. [laughing] i think that's low. how often does he write a book? every year. sometimes if you get off the airplane and have a book going, human books? sometimes he publishes two books in a year.e really amazing. he'll be working on o a biograpy on one hit and the economic history of the united states on the other. really amazingly prolific. so okay, how many of his published books have been pulitzer prize finalists? now we're getting tough here.

to? two of them have been pulitzer prize finalist. that's right. we've got inbuilt brands a delightful person to address those.s in oneha of the reasons i always enjoy having bill back is that he's one of the few academic historians who also bridges the gap to the reading public. it takes place in so many of the history channel and other documentaries where you see in and is expertise and it's really a lot of fun to follow bills career that way. he always a something very interesting to say, and that's the otherck reason we always hae him back. he can make you look at a subject you thought you knew and see it in a new light. so because he so good at that rather than my talking any further, that he ask you, are you ready to learn tonight? ready to learn? yes. bill brands, come on up. [applause]

>> thank you, gleaves come for that kind introduction. thank you all for coming. i'm delighted to be back in grand rapids to be back at the ford museum. i'm here because gleaves asked me to come and the reason he has become is that he wants me to write a book on the 1970s. he didn't put white so bluntly when we had the conversation that led to this invitation back in september. but he pointed out to me that we are approaching the 50th anniversary of the several events that placed gerald ford at the center of national and international attention. and he wanted somebody to sort of frame the period. so what is the america that gerald ford stepped onto center stagee of? and i had actually, i don't know if i told you this, but i've been thinking about the 1970s for a while.

specifically, i've been thinking about the 1970s since the 1970s. [laughing] now, lately i've been writing books about people long dead. so i wrote my most recent book is about william sherman and geronimo and that generation of people who fought the last phase of the indian wars of the west. the book before that was about folks who lived and fought during the american revolution. so when you deal with history that's that deep in the past, then we all look on it essentially from the same t perspective, from long past the time it happened. but if we talk about the 1970s, then we're talking about something i lived through. please raise your r hand if you

have a fairly active memory of the 1970s. okay. yeah. before this i should say i had lunch with a friend who is the judge in austin and one of the things he wasfe saying is, , i e a book a a few years ago about douglas macarthur and harry truman. and this gentleman is a little older than i am, said that was one of his earliest memories in sort of being aware of the world. he remembered when truman fired macarthur. so obviously the farther back we go, the fewer people they are who remember this stuff. but the reasonn i am saying this is a bad i'm going uses as a way a way to kind of frame my approach to this may be book that i might write. but i will say that gleaves is a very effective spokesman for his

causes, w and he might very well talk me into writing this book. but you are going to be a test audience to see a sort of how you like thels idea, but also, d i'm going to speak for maybe half an hour or so, and then i want to engage in a conversation. because, because i'm i the hands that you raise just a moment ago i'm talking to people who lived through the t 1970s. and there's part of me that is the author who writes books that i want people to read and by what i i want to know what wod get you to buy a book on the 1970s. first question for allesf of yo, would you be more inclined or less inclined to buy a book about a time that you lived through? raise your hand if moreed inclined? all other things being equal.

i think so. i can understand it. there are people who like their literature whether it's fiction or nonfiction to be sort of exotic. .. so we read about some period that's very from the present time and that's the appeal for of us some of the time, maybe for other people all the time, but there definitely is. i mean, the hands raised the second time indicate that there's this interest in this time that this time i lived through so i'm older than some of s the younger than some of you but i will tell you this. fifty years ago today is a. when i was in college. the first presidential election i voted for him was 1972 election and i was just 19 at

the time of the election in the first presidential election under the age of 21 could vote and i was pretty interested in public affairs. so this reflected back when i have an american history teacher that barely engaged my political history so the history qc unfolding before our eyes most evidently political, what's happening in foreign politics, this is political and i was paying attention in part because i had the teacher in large part becausehi focus was on an individual, at the events but people and what were they doing and thinking?

what made their world go around? maybe i was influenced by the teacher or maybe drone because i had pre-existing inclination and when i tried to write history, some of myua books ar biographies, andrew jackson or ronald ray so when i write about it. or subject, it hinges on these individuals. that's the way i tend to interpret history and what draws me to history. some of you will remember your history class for high school something less than exciting. [laughter] they have a bad reputation, i speak as someone who used to teach history and has four.

i so teach history in college. perhaps i used this line and perhaps some of you will remember it. where i teach others continuing education programs and therefore retired folks so they have times in the hands and they say is history. preface something i was going to say but i don't remember if i told this group is story before and a gentleman, i said this 20 years ago and this gentleman was probably 20 years younger than i and he stood up and said sunny, you don't remember, you sure don't remember. [laughter] so people's recollection of their history class, high schoos history class and it's true i know in texas, perhaps michigan

as well that people cannot remember the last think of their high school history teacher but they will remember the first name was coach. [laughter] there are a lot of nonspecialists teaching high school history but anyway i had special interest in paying attention to public affair especially in american politics and american foreign policy. in the early 1970s personal, is anybody in the room the same situation and preferably to answer this question, if you were married in college in the early 70s. what was under male wine? it could be obvious. when you are in college, why were you paying attention for

example, to who was going to win a presidential election in 1972? what was hanging over your, my head. the war innd vietnam the draft. i knew the of the war was still on when i graduated from college or heaven forbid, college deferment where the tract should the that i might be off to vietnam i reflected on this to my students during their lifetime, i say this now, were born about the time the united states and afghanistan in 2001.e between then and the u.s. iraq, i said it's striking to me that neither one of those wars was particularly popular in the states but there was almost nothing in the way of

progress and i asked them to reflect, why do you suppose that was? none of them had any skin in the game so it didn't matter. it didn't matter when i was in college y they remember, do you arremember lorrie date and that figured out are you going to be drafted for not? he never lived on the campus where i was you could hear reactions from open windows of the dorm rooms where they would be oh no! or a yet! depending on what number was drawn when your birthday came up. i'm drawn to this. and i remember much of it but i

had written short of around and through, ronald reagan was active int. 1970 so i covered se of that ground but to look at it specifically in figure out what was really going on, i've never set a story on gerald ford. i will explain why if somebody were to write a book on american politics and foreign policy, it might be a smart idea because he's right in the middle of some woman to stop and maybe if i do decide to write this, maybe he will play a central role but at the moment, i'm thinking the time i had in mind was the great unraveling and i can tell you a

little bit at the time but looking back, i seek the 1970s as a. and i don't want to get to specifics, the title is watergate when the 70s began, i will talk about watergate because in then middle of the story but the 70s in some ways s argue whether the 70s were more important than the 60s because they didn't pay attention to the calendar, they just happen but what did happen, the 70s served as a time when an attitude toward politics and government unraveled and put it this way, 1970 if you had become of political age in 1970, when i

was 17 years old and 18 and so on, i knew enough about history of american politics during the previous half decade or century or so to realize in the 1930s there had been a shift in american attitude regarding what they expected from government in the 18th century, 19th centuryno and almost nothing of government. you looked to yourself and help the government stay out of the way and everybody was a believer in small government. modern republican party in the 1850s, it was the first political party, it might be worth a reminder because they want the government to assist in

the development of the american economy but the idea government should help out people when they lost a job, became sick, when theyed were in impoverished for whatever reason, it just wasn't what government did. people look to private charities in the family and pray but not the government, government is not in that business. he famously said a law would provide aid to texas farmers. he said i always thought people should support government not that the government should support the people but during the 1930s the depression hit so many people and in ways that make them realize i didn't do anything wrong and still the economy collapsed on me and i

have to deal with the consequences said there was this change in the american attitude and roosevelt ran on the platforms that the idea government should help folks when they need help. this set in motion this idea government should be more involved and help solve the problems megan society faces. at the time this was ancharacterized as american liberalism. you are liberal in those days if you looked to government to help solve society's problems. you're conservative if you said no, leave thosehe problems in te private sector. the figure government side in

1930s and accepting this new thing. nobody expected it and once they got social security paychecks, there was no way you can take it away until 1960. nobody expected to be in the healthcare business but a long time medicare and thought maybe they would privatize so there were was his tendency in the 1960s and vaguely aware in the 70s to think it is a permanent trend in american life and

people will expect more of government. the conservatives didn't go away but if you get 55%, it's a big win but then things changed and in 1970 this war of government is an attitude and jump ahead to ronald reagan being elected and ronald reagan says government is not the solution, it is the problem itself so something happened to change this view so it is this consensus government can solve america's problems but

there are other aspects. 1970 united states the most powerful country in theha world and put its mind to doing, it could land a man on the moon in the unitedve states involved communism around the world and engaged in a war in southeast asia so in 1970 they believed you could still do it. realize andicans furthermore the economic miracle was the american economy starting on world war ii that

created modern american middle-class and they were better educated and better everything. 1940s, 50s and 60s but in the 1980s things begin to fall apart and the first thing is the united states off the gold standard, the problem the financial system and can no longer carry that so richard nixon says it would no longer make that the goal so then inflation in the cold part seems symbolic because most people didn'tfo care if you have knowledge in gold or not but inflation became chronic behavior and then americans said this idea each generation will

be wealthier than the generation before, this crumbles as well so all of this is going on and there's another aspect appreciated in prospect by political philosophers and some of you will remember during most of the 20th century there was this phenomena called the solid south and you know which party was the solid for? the democratic party and when lyndon johnson on behalf of the national democraticar party, a southerner himself, when he put the signature in 1964 turned to

his secretary and said bill, i think we lost the south republican party for a long time to come so this was beginning to happen about 1970 continue to the 80s, 90s this great migrationt of southerners out f the democratic party into republican party underway and the student simply rebalance politics, it made politics much more bitter and partisan than they had before because until 1960 there were republicans and democrats.

before that there were democrats and whigs andbl federalist and republican but every decade before the 1960s, each of the two political parties often shared philosophical outlook of the other party so moderate republicans and democrats, in the 1960s there were conservative republicans and cold water republicans and there were liberal republican rockefeller, there were liberal democrats and conservative democrats so under those circumstances, success in politics required and permitted a bipartisan approach so when

lyndon johnson was life legislation, he got higher percentage of republican vote in the democratic vote because they voted against it but the consequence was when laws passed they had a credibility that comes only from the fingerprints of both parties on the bill. what happened in the course of 30 here's have to was a two-party system, there were relatively few democrat in the conservatives who'd been democrat in the republican party

conservative and there's no room left so the republican party becomes conservative. and take your pick. i need to hands for this. in the 1960s, you could get on any important issue, republican governor, and the democrats over here and there was enough overlap between the two to find that middleground report. the two bodies pulled apart so by the 1990s every republican is more conservative than every democrat and the two parties

then fell under the tierney there was this middleground and usually met thereby the other nominee but now politics is not reaching out to the middle, it's mobilizing your base and you could mobilize as you get more extreme as the election comes along so this was happening in the 1970s and the biggest part of thishe was the loss of faithn government and the loss of faith in government, what underpinned the idea that government is part

of the solution, it is the solution or could be part of it, the confidence when the government does stop it gets it right and if you were of that generation, if i'd been born 30 years earlier, old enough to know the great depression then i was fortunateor enough to lose y job in the great depression and provide unemployment, conversation for me, if i'd lost money when banks failed in now knew something called a dic which guaranteed mike deposit bank, that's what i like and that would work. then comes world war ii and the american government has never been more successful in any big undertaking saving democracy and world war ii. destroying fascism and making it

the most powerful and richest country on the face of the earth, government really got stuff right and this persistence to the 50s and into the 60s, government was sort of coasting on credibility that had gotten but still quitet mo possible, io remember hearing this if you don't know whether the government is something right or not, you should probably have confidence they g are and they know more about this than we do, it probably take the same policy so there are a lot of policy actions that didn't actually incurea close because the idea s these are good people doing their best and they know more

about this than i do i'll refer to them. then comes watergate. he knew i was going t to get their. [laughter] along comes watergate and vietnam and these two issues and ordinary people have faith in government to do the right thing or accomplish this and in the case of vietnam it was a combination because vietnam -- well, the end of vietnam, how many of you remember reading the pentagon papers or the way they were published? they were a secret pentagon

history and it demonstrated and they were saying we will win the war. so when the pentagon papers were published, it became apparent there was serious misleading on this and this is one thing that turned americans against the war that first of all it lasted a long time, long wars are not popular is for suret when they will have to fight against their will, draft and then vietnam and in the defeat so not only was it defective and therefore unethical and not worthy of confidence but also inept even doing the wrong thing, i didn't accomplish it so behind the

confidence, this is crucial to the story and this is the other part of the story, watergate so now i'm going to share with you a technique, a device i use with my students in part because it takes me back to when i was their age, getting younger and younger every year. [laughter] i will telll you the reason i still teach us the first day of the fall semester to me is the best day of the year because i get this new crop of students, i teach mostly freshman and they come in, i teach a class monday morning and the first college

class they'd ever had and they talk about it a little bit in the great majority of them, this is the first time they'd ever lived away from home, the first time they'd ever have the opportunity or it's been encouraged to figure out what they think and not just your their parents and they get to decide, who am i? what do i believe and who am i? another thing, someone studying politics for a long time, it's easy to get kind of shaded and know we gothe these problems tht are never going to go away but i don't tell it to my students. [laughter]

may come into my class maybe you can remember but when you're 18, first of all, your entering this new world and there are always possibilities before you and theyhe come in and they are as idealistic as can be and whatever cause they are engaged in, they are going to solve that problem and more power to them. it does keep me from thinking we are never going to fix this so i appreciate for my students but anyway, back in the 1970s so the exercise takes me back, when i teach the second half of my u.s. history, the first have from colonial times in the second-half civil war to the present. not only do we have to get to 2022 but it does mean the exercise i'm about to describe

actuallyor works and it sits in the course for the last assignment students have, i tell them, i require them to read the newspaper from their hometown from the week in which they were going to go back 18, 19, 20 years and vida works weeks worth of newspaper and find out what was going on in the world. i do this because i want to -- well, part of it is i want them to learn to appreciate their parents. when you were 18, i think 18 is perhaps appreciation for parents. when your eight, you think your parents are great. by the time you're 38 and have kids of your own, then you are okay, all right but when you're 18, your parents don't know anything. this isn't really the main

reason for the exercise but i think it ise a positive side effect because they have to learn what the parentst are dealing with and not just with her parents when i was your age and etc. but it happened and another thing is i tell my students all the time that they don't like the world they are inheriting, the legal age of 18, in their first election and do whatever you do and you go and if you don't like the world you are inheriting, blame me and i would say if you were there, blame them, too. blame the older generation because we created this world wa are about to hand outt . statistically speaking, the great majority will be as old as i am if you don't like the world then, it's on you because you

had your chance. so most of them live like this because so that's what was happening. there was another reason and it is to give perspective on history and how we know what we know. this is just history. if anybody tells you something, the think they told me, is it credible? some people trust more implicitly and other people we distrust all the time and we consume information somewhere between the two so i asked for two things, ith asked them to identify something that seemed important at the time but turns out not to i be important and wt

is the measure of this? it's reported on consistently through the week but has never shown up in any history book that 20 years after the fact roughly, it is simply not important and probably won't be surprised to know it accounts for about 90% of reading a newspaper. most news is out of date and three or four days let alone decades. the easy part of the decade exercise is they changed the rules in 2003 or something like that and nobody cares. the other part says something that's going to become important enough to make into history books but is not reported on. what was going on so something

was happening, it was not thought to be important at the time but it came to be important. the things that was not reported on turned out to be earth shattering or destroying watergate. when watergate first started, it was to be a secret, not to be reported on and the members of nixon, they did their best to keep it quiet but watergate goes far back beyond at least a few years beyond the moment of june 1972 when the burglars were arrested at the

watergate office complex in washington d.c. and and the line conveyed by president nixon's people was a burglary that had nothing to do with the presidency so just ignore it. it was a third burglary for sure. one of the curious storylines of watergate was not only a cover up on all of the other stuff unethical, it was dishonest but also inept. if they had been any good they would never have been arrested but here is where i like to make

sure students don't think things have happened in history, they are simple or uncomplicated, if there's one mission i have in life is to complicate their understanding, your understanding of what you think about history because a lot of people are willing to believe people they know things that happen today, sure it is complex and there's this and that but when they look back they want things cut and dry this is a good person, that's a bad person, that's a hero and villain but that's not the way it works. richard nixon has reasonable, ethical, maybe even honorable motives putting in train what

would lead to that burglary and watergate. i referred to the pentagon papers, this massive breach of american security because the papers were classified and not supposed to be out so thousands of pages came out. who did this? how could it be done? a recent example six months ago now there was a draft of a supreme court opinion leaked and as far as i know, it's not been identified. how hard can it be? anyway so nixon is really concerned the american national security apparatus, people who work in thein pentagon and intelligence service and the fbi, they haveci decided to take

policy into their own hands and ofhe course leaking pentagon papers is to make it more difficult the work in the vietnam. that complicated nixon's job because he was trying to wind down the war in vietnam but there's all this other stuff to deal with. the bigger issue was nixon was in the process but would be the opening to china after 20 plus years turning the peoples of republic as a friction and the onlyme general, a government in taiwan, it would normalize between the united states and china and as a person who'd been opposing any such thing before

he became president, he would have to do this in utter secrecy because if it was early, the intelligence of this strategy would be able to push to the side and make it impossible the chinese government would have not gone along with it, it was controversy for them, too so nixon engages because they stopped leaks. [laughter] they want to find out how ellsberg, the principal of the pentagon papers, he was offered this and why he did what he did and it led to crossing of the line of individuals privacy so the office was finding out if they revealed deep secret to his psychologist and it was unethical and i don't say this

to try to exonerate nixon but it was worth before this and that was all it had been, it would have been convenient since but it was beyond that because once you get this organization, you have this experience but once you hire people to do something, you got to find something for them to do and you can't apply this approach. you can't just hire the workers, people will invade their offices and if they are on the payroll, they are on the payroll so to go from this approach, this is going to lead to an opening in here is the big deal, it would lead to the first arms control agreement between nuclear

superpowers so there is a worthy and to fight care but they are going to do other stuff so the democratic national headquarters and watergate with arms control policy and this is where my interest in policy kicks in. it applies to nixon and the opposite to gerald ford because nixon clearly was going to win the election of 1976 no question about it. he won the margin in 68 but the democrat as a result that the debacle in the national

convention recast the rule for nomination that set in motion the nomination of the decent fellow, from south dakota, a decent fellow asked probably the worst candidate in american history for 60 or 70 years and if you want to know why many people in the country is the democrats can be counted on to act as if they know better than the country and they are smarter than anybody else and he goes back to this. and a decent guy. by any stretch of the

imagination and the outcome andt wasn't enough. and he was shrewd politically and he gotot south dakota and richard nixon. [laughter] and i still cannot figure out what motivatedis him to do that.

was it something in his childhood? is there something you can't just win big, you can't just went in, you have to win it all. i don't't know and it was persol because richard nixon was smart and understanding the pieces of the puzzle fit together and this will slide their but why did he go into politics? politics is usually how other people go and they stand on the corner when they are getting off

at the fauci saying i like your boat. nixon was painful under small talk and the punchline has to be explained in advance. [laughter] some of you will remember, the prime minister of israel and growing up in milwaukee and she had a foreign minister and if you are a crossword puzzle, you know that because it works really well but was educated at oxford and spoke with them.

and the foreign minister and so if you've paid any attention to the career, you will know kinzinger even though arriving in the united states from germany and had an older brother who spoke english and an accent but still the foreign policy, apparently if you have a german exit it made you -- and madam i avminister so where is this goi? nixon says we both have jewish

foreign ministers. [laughter] which is not particularly unusual if they are from israel. [laughter] he says yes and mine speaks english. [laughter] anyway. [laughter] and it drove nixon to do what he did and i'm not going to relate the whole story but i hope i've made it at least plausible that watergate is of the heart of what i consider to be the most important development american history. the last year, this great unraveling or a big shift in american attitudes toward government, i should add

watergate there was this moment, 50 years from 1930s to mid 1970s and they were willing to accept the government will because they were thought to be trustworthy and competent. in faith in american trustworthiness and competence and americans change their mind. i'll bring it back to gerald ford in future installments but gerald ford was the ideal person and richard nixon as president in the central way and the

understanding of history and politics in the way it should gerald ford not become president because of that fire in the belt that drives most people to endure what they have tond indor to become that. he didn't have this need to reach the top of that receipt pull. so and if they hadn't reached the top he was not like that at all and he seemed to be pretty comfortable. he was a solid citizen, a solid member ofss congress, he had ben for several years the minority leader in the house of representatives.

the height of what he hoped for in his political career was to become speaker of the house and republicansse if they had not bn for decades and he was on the verge of retiring when nixon lost resigned because unrelated to getting swept up into the whole thing so nixon is looking for someone, the publican party for someone honesty and devotion to the national interest cannot be questioned and part of the appeal is the united states because it's awkward and richard

nixon watergate is becoming uncovered it takes a long time during 72 to 73 and it finally resigned in 1974 with no scandal in the last thing you want to convey is pushing out so gerald ford took the job, it is an honor but didn't expected to lead to any thing and thought this would be nice and then retire and 76 and ford they didn't know where this was going

but when the story went the way it did, and it was this time it emerged it's not the crime, it will be thehe cover up and it's the pay and a better one and get it all outth there and everythig you have, every day you're going to be in the paper. and he was laughing. it wasas this biographical part. some of you remember watergate. and it was the bigger deal because they tried to make it

harder in all this stuff. and they were doingev this. but there was never any strong desire to kick ronald reagan out my did youou happen to nixon? resigned one step ahead so why does it happen to nixon and not greg? they were talking about great affairs so they live in democracy on the principles of democracy. and people like you.

and they cut regular a lot of black.n he wasn't likable. it all sounds like junior high if you want to know who's going to win, the question should the candidate will be in talking about president so jerry ford comes in and watergate to the end quickly, it's on over but anyway. richard nixon, the supreme court

says you have to turn over these incriminating cases and nixon is informed by the publican leaders in congress, they will be impeached and you're going to be convicted so you better make a decision because that will happen so nixon resigned. this new guy and nixon straightforward ins michigan dos but then and all of a sudden

they are weighed. and did ford say did you resign and you might be in jail and by this time there's a real possibility. there's no evidence that anything like the deal occurred and to think it would be explicit however, it is possible and the big deal is this president is no longer president. that is precisely the argument they made in justifying.

the short-term consequence was the least in the country and a sense that okay, we can move past watergate so short-term this decision was good for the country. slightly longer term was ford. it meant there was no way who's going to win in 1976. in fact, even the bad news about richard nixon, ford could have been the favorite and 76 because if you look at the electoral map of 1972, the publicans had this huge majority and a lot of those would fill republican especially if they were not nixon anymore. it cost jerry ford a lot short-term to make this decision but i don'tse get the sense that

he recognized him much,nc it was the right thing to do but i've never said it's the high school and politics so make the decision go by the outcome. for the next 45 years, i believe in the public at large probably a good idea, ford's decision was right but the reason you might appreciate the last five years or so, people started to think maybe that wasn't such a good idea because we are still in a confused state of mind whether t the president of the united states can be prosecuted. we've never tested and if there was ever a clear time, that would have been the time so the decision to pardon nixon was

good for the country, it seems less clear now than it did then but it's interesting with on the same thing, the decision was bad for jerry ford short-term and 76. as much as anything else, it cause his reputation for integrity or character, putting national interest ahead of personal interest has grown so jerry ford is remember for the fact that he was especially to our jaded eyes today, a model of a public servant who goes in to politics for the right reasons and support himself in theon rit and appropriate way and is willing to abide by the decision of the people even if it turns out adversely so gerald ford at

the center of all of this going on, i think he remained someone who's instructive for us today and i'll put it this way, this is probably an audience that might be more inclined to jerry ford and other audiences. [laughter] in 2024, how many of you would have voted for him? a breath of fresh air. anyway. [laughter] do we have time for questions? okay. questions, please. >> i have a comment, a couple of comments. [inaudible] [laughter] >> if you can get there 10:00 monday and wednesday, my door is open. >> i hope they realize how inspiring you are because you

make history vibrant, exciting, fun, factual and not dragging. [applause] ... >> yes, there's a question back here yes. >> this hasas to do with your reports demise and how he lost the election is often been said that one of his problems was that he was not as a man, and he kept to next to the cabinet in place any off comments on that. >> yes wealth there's a good reason why he kept nixon cabinet in place because he wanted to make clear this was not an

inside to and this was fully aware that nobody elected him vice president, nobody had elected him president, is over him, to come in and say i'm going to change things, had no mandate to do that it was very clear, the injured nixon was a one was about to be impatient debit nixon was at the center of all of this and nixon and watergate, the scandal involved a couple of members of the cabinet but for the most part it was for people working in the white house and so to keep the other members of the cabinet was entirely appropriate and you're absolutely right, it did hurt his political chances because it allowed the people werem not inclined to vote for him on the fence or for example they talk about that there was a steel table he's just coming in pennies taking over and if he would've been able to distance

himself more from the previous administration like cleaning house but it also would've made it simply, that much harder to do the government business. because you can imagine, that in the wake of watergate, being a member of the cabinet, that is not aar particularly appealing b offer. and considering new people in when the government had been essentially paralyzed during most of this to your time from the center of 70 due to the summer of 70 for me would've been a grave disservice to the country as a whole. and i know that i want to make enough to be a saint but i do think that he had here's what i think that his natural inclination was to ask himself, so one of the best thing to do for the country. i think that he made a very possible case to himself, the best thing to do is to maintain as much continuity has we can have things got rid of the people who are going to go to

jail and i should point out, that nixon didn't go to jail but something like ford ford as other members of the administration people refer the administration did go to jail and hold watergate scandal so it was a big deal predict and are there other questions. [laughter] [laughter] .> yes >> how is the media coverage of the presidency changed. >> i am so glad you asked the question. [laughter] [laughter] >> because i didn't get a chance to say all of the things that the 1970sng during simon this o was one spike of ia real teaching that is most directly connected to watergate and so i don't know if any of you perhaps have had part of your life's work or your career in journalism but if you have, you will know that journalists before the '90s of these were

usually called reporters have something they did not require an advanced degree and you started out on the copy desk or something. and you learnrn how to ask the y questions and you always learn to lead with the peer med style and the ghost of the top and then from the bottom and then it was a glamorous career. and omega glamorous. word word in e bernstein because when everybody else was saying there's nothing this watergate story, they kept at it and then, they finally will they uncovered a come there is more involved in and of p course, to get played y robert redford and dustin hopp often, that makessm it looks glamorous a boy go to journalism school that i can be like robert redford dustin hoffman and also was taken more serious level. before the 1970s and i'm not going to say specifically before

watergate about chronologically work that way and then 1960s, the reporting on politics in washington, was kind of a kobe inside baseball affair the reporters hung out with politicians and we do the same cocktail receptions the recent get to the same schools in all of this and there was this dependency to think that happens in georgetown, stays in georgetown but there wasn't this desire to uncover the bad things that government is doing maybe a recognition. the politicians they are given to mcculloch, willingness to respect the divide between public lives and private lives and do you need to know who's having an affair to know how you should vote patient during the next election and unfortunately

there are similarf consequences there and a lot of something else worked under the rug and so, we really would've in public services if the public an unmarked about john kennedy self during presidency and how he was on gossiping killers any good looking and healthy tv but he really was not any could've been useful to the voters to know reporterste know it mostly they reported for the washington post they knew what, were not going to share that in when, woodward and bernstein come another newspapers caught on, they realized they could bring down a presidency, this is heavy stuff. and then people have to the journalism school. and we are not simply neutral reporters on what happened to, cleanup and influence onon the outcome. as of the journalism becomes a

cause at least at first it was often sort of progressive reform is where the historians should hesitate to ascribe too much causation here because by watergate is going on in in half decade after after, the media landscape is changing dramatically the biggest change is the invention and distribution, cable television because in the days before cable tv, the government could and did enforce fairness in the god of fairness, equal treatment of both parties both sides of an issue in the three majorwn broadcast networks because the government owned the airways there was a limited - but along comes cable tv and the fcc the federal communications commission so that we not need to turn to anymore because everybody can have their own cable tv station so is our three

coming up re- hundred or 3000, as long as going to have a "fox news", then people do not like that can create msnbc and so interestingly, from the historian perspective, the united states and is media landscape goes from a relatively brief periodod of time and qualy age of television really come in the early 50s to about the mid- 1970s where the media outlets were expected toec be neutral reporters. but as youie go back to the earliest today, in the 1790s, political parties created their own newspapers are pretty newspapers were part of the party and newspapers in the 18 hundreds and none 19 century, they were always honest always clearly identified as one party to the point of having republican and that label in the title democrats in the title

that is the only way you get into the 20th century when you get into a situation of more narrow bed with that butter coming on friday supposedly this one invited it down the middle and david brinkley and so on with any get cable tv and you split up again. so the media becomes part of this. and in the 19 and 80s and it does today but it throws us back to the late 18th century in the 19 century and so this is something that's been around a while but it change the landscape this idea that journalists, not just the reporters but the journal so they can be stars and you can really tell theif difference a f you well, while the press conferences they call them press conferences driving the miniconference of the press conference franklin roosevelt were not televised and they deliberately were not broadcast on the radio that he could read

the transcripts of them and is really clear that the reporters who cover the president took part in press conferences, this was much more of a collegial approach were all trying to serve the public it in the government try to serve it one way but there is not this idea and you do not to get reporters who are constantly asking the gotcha questions you start to stop beating your wife yet and that sort of thing. but after watergate, any of you who have watch a presidential news conferences, summary like sam donaldson is up there you know, and you can tell, were going to get you we got you this and so now and in the days before watergate, the journalist did not make any money a the reporters there were schoolteachers but now, now you

could be a media start and you get paid like a star and so this is something that hasn't followed after watergate and watergate is partly responsible but he did this change in the media landscape. >> okay and thank you very much. [applause] [applause] >> i met. [applause] >> i turn off the microphone a little bit too soon. >> you are the star right. [applause] [applause] >> okay, now this but want everybody to understand that this is at partnership about tonight's programming from this gift is a reflection of thise partnership is a you know i represent the presidential foundationan the presidential library museum iss represented y wreckage will for example, center for presidential studies is represented by brent back

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