please join me in welcoming our presidential families forum 2024 descendants for this year. please welcome to the stage, mr. massey mckinley.

and. following massey, i'd like to also now welcome up miss mary jean eisenhower her. returning returning this year. miss patricia taft. for the first time joining us at the presidential families forum, mr. james carter, the fourth. and clifton truman daniel. here he is and of course, i would also like to to welcome our moderator, the kurt graham director of the harry truman presidential library and museum.

and as you will see from our from our attendees, unfortunate ali, ulysses grant dietz was unable to join us this evening. so we do apologize for that. but ladies and gentlemen, the 2024 presidential families forum. thank you very much, dr. kurt graham. the floor is yours. for. his. just turn your phones up. okay. well, good evening. good afternoon. whoever we are, it's great to. great to be here with you. i have to say a couple of things for. oh, here we are. that let me start that over. good evening. welcome. great to see you all. great to have you here. i, i feel a little bit like some dude that's like following, you know, the winning cast into the oscars or something, you know, these famous descendants. i mean, there's just such a such a great pleasure to be with such wonderful people, too. but i just wanted to say, before we start into the panel,

introduce our topic and start to talk about the things that you came here to hear. i just want to thank you as an audience for assembling here. and some of you have traveled to be here. i know. and this is a wonderful place. and i think, you know, there's a couple of times that we've been here of clinton and his team and the board and harry's girls and all the people who are associated with this. this this is not i know it seems like for a lot of people, oh, it's a fun in the sun kind of place to be. and yes, there is surfing and sailing and all that. i mean, i get it. it's great. but this property and this community is truly a national treasure and you have so much here to be proud of. so much to be grateful for. and i know i speak for the group that we all so enjoy the opportunity to be here, partly because it's a lot of fun, but partly because what this group is about is education is helping the public understand the importance of the presidency, of

different aspects of of presidential leadership and they all are very steeped in their grandfathers or great grandfathers legacies and have become very articulate and polished spokespeople for those legacies. and it's always a pleasure and a great privilege for me to to interact with them and to sort of hear the family stories and we're going to get into some of that this afternoon. and i hope you'll hope you'll enjoy what they all have to say. they've all been introduced so we won't wanna spend a lot of time doing that. i'm going to hop around chronologically a little bit and we'll kind of work our way back in time. what we're talking about tonight, you may have heard there's an election this year. i don't know if anybody's aware of that. so, you know, may just have been newsflash to you, but presidential elections, we like to think that they've never been as bad as they are and have never been as horrible or whatever. well, presidential elections are complex, complicated things in a democratic republic.

and there have been some very unique things that have happened, concerns about the constitution concerned about our process have been around for for a long time. and so what we want to talk about tonight is how do presidents navigate that? how do they use their personal influence, their sort of. personalities, whatever you want to say, the leadership that they exert on their party, on their campaigns, on the on the nation, on the public to try to prevail in these in these contests. and one of the things that we talk about a lot today is a thing called opposition research. you know, find out about your opponent, what are the weaknesses, what what are the what are the vulnerabilities that that opponent has? now, that term has not existed throughout the republic, but the concept has the idea of exploiting a weakness of an opponent is not something that we invented in, you know, 2016 or 2020 or bringing it to four today.

it's something that has been around always. so we're going to start with one of our panelists here, mr. james carter, who we're very pleased to welcome to the first his first presidential panel. in this way, mr. carter not only knows about this historically through his grandfather's campaigns, but he's also professionally been involved in some of this opposition research and understands the power of it. and so, james, tell us a little bit about this, about opposition research, how you got involved in it, what what it is and your experience with it. and then maybe from there, jump back into those two important elections, 1976 and 1980, where your grandfather had two very different outcomes as in, you know, but obviously, but a similar approach. so go ahead and take it from there. okay. so the first time we actually started calling it opposition research was the republican national committee put together an opposition research committee

at their headquarters in 1971. so before that, it was just research. and, you know, opposition research kind of gets a bad name, but it really is just finding out everything about whoever it is that you're assigned to look up. so it's it really is just research, but it's roots. the way they did watergate. i mean, it really starts in in it was actually the one of the first things that the committee did was to place a a staffer in the muskie campaign to dig up dirt on ed muskie. so it wasn't, you know, nixon necessarily at that point, but i mean, nixon and lyndon johnson both used the fbi to surveil their opponents. so that was cheating.

yeah. yeah. so that. yeah. too. yeah. i have been i mean, i'm not old enough to have been an opposition researcher during my grandparents time, but i have been an opposition researcher for the democratic party since 2012, when i was kind of the middle man in the deal to bring the. 47% video public during the obama's reelection against mitt romney and. you know, i was doing it as a hobby at the time, but then after that, you know, got really big, i was able to turn it into a career which was which is fun. it's nice to be able to put your user hobby as your career and actually make money on doing it

all right. but i do want to stress, like i said before, opposition research gets a bad name. and the reason why they get a bad name is because our job is to dig up the information. then we give that information to campaigns and then they do dirty stuff with it. so it's their fault that the information is just information. yeah. so in that i wanted to make that clear, that's an important point. that's a great point. yeah. talk to us a little bit about your you know, as we as we think about the different presidencies that are represented here, they've all everyone up here said, i participated in more than one election. i mean, so so tell us about your grandfather or his approach to his election, his campaigning in 1976 and sort of what some of

the context was for that. and then and then by 1980, things were different. so talk about how his approach to whether you call it opposition research or understand his opponents because he had two very different opponents in jerry ford and ronald reagan. yeah, he did. and in 76, he didn't necessarily run against jerry ford here. and for himself and for the idea of a transparency and honesty in government, because it was right after watergate and that was, you know, everybody's worried about you know, whether democracy was going to end, which is, you know, every generation has their time when they think it's all going to end. and so that one wasn't necessarily an opposition research campaign. that was, you know, literally shaking as many hands as possible, you know, and we have a large family and everybody in the family fanned out across the country and stayed in people's homes everywhere. and my mom tells a story of

campaigning in new hampshire and the house that they were living in, like the heat didn't work. most of the time and they would actually throw pails of water on the screens, on the windows so that it would freeze and keep the wind out as yeah, walking around with with icicles growing out of the toe of her shoes, knocking on doors. so was because a lot of sacred space or at least the way she tells it. yeah. i believe her mostly yeah but yeah it's the you know the peanut brigade was was what the the group of people that went out. so it was a bunch of georgian that basically just invading every other state and bombing free beds anywhere that they could. they could get them. so but in 1980, it was it was different. he was already known and established. he had a record that everybody

knew. there were several crises that had happened and that he was dealing with at the time. and i so in order to kind of get the upper hand in the election and first, i want to talk about the primary. because 1980 is still the only time when a major president candidate, an incumbent president, has lost a primary to you know, someone from their party. it was and that was tough. but then the and that was against ted kennedy. yeah. so the chappaquiddick thing came up and that wasn't like necessarily difficult. and, you know, opposition research to come up with you didn't have to dig super deep for that, but it was, you know, used in the way that you know, kind of opposition research is

now where it was, you know, especially in the primary, it was, you know, you get a couple of journalists to do articles about chappaquiddick again and, you know, a lot of the way that they do that now is is they would say, what does chappaquiddick do for kennedy's chances? you know, so that was the new spin on it was how is this going to effect? but it's still the same story that's getting out. so most of those, when you hear a story about that, about one particular candidate in an election, that is one of the dirty things that the campaign does with the information that people like me give them. and then the journalists take it and do their horserace stuff with it. so it's all, you know, what would this do to his polls and that kind of thing? but so that's the way you can always recognize it because it's always presented the same way. how will this particular thing that's bad about them affect

their chances in the campaign or how well they're going to do in certain states, or when, you know, that kind of thing. so once he was once he wins that primary against kennedy, you'd made an interesting point that he didn't really run against jerry ford in 76. but i think by 80, he definitely feels that he needs to run against ronald reagan. and again, we can let the plane go. he didn't do a lot of campaigning in 1980. obviously, the campaign did. he didn't do it himself because he was dealing with the hostage crisis at the time and he was trying not to annoy the people who had our citizens over there that were trapped. so basically he said, okay, now in order to give them the best chance of getting out alive, i'm not going to campaign. i'm going to stay quiet for this

time and do that. but while he was doing that and the campaign, of course, was i mean, at the time, it was all about reagan being an actor and being a lightweight and not knowing, you know, you know, not having enough background, general knowledge about politics and not knowing how it worked and things like that. no, he had been governor of california, but, you know, back then the way people think about california was the same way they think about it now. so that that and no offense. but that's the way that you you know, you would talk so it was kind of like he's you know he's just been in california. he's an actor. hollywood, you know, that kind of thing. and then, you know, jimmy carter's been there, done that. he knows he's very knowledgeable, all this kind of thing. so that was the the tack that they went. but i really believe in that

election. it was more outside events that that made the difference rather than like day to day campaigning stuff. i feel like patti wants to say something. so, you know, as a moderator, i feel obliged. is there a rebuttal? do we need to give equal time to it? well, okay, we'll take that. no, i was going to just say to conclude on mr. carter and you know, it's i remember reading that that he was shaken when he met right after reagan won and reagan came. you know, today's was usually a courtesy meeting or meetings. and to brief him on, you know, some of the situations that are going on. and i remember hearing and i don't know if this is true and maybe i don't if you can verify this or not. but the carter was shaken by the fact that reagan just didn't seem to get it. i mean, like he was he was, you know, not really engaging in the important issues. and i don't know if that's fair to rain or not, but i mean, that just seemed to be at least mr. carter's impression when he met

him. i think their leadership styles were very, very different. my grandfather was a detail oriented kid, probably didn't delegate enough down to, you know, crossing every teen dining area, down to, you know, at one point. and i think this is kind of a story that has is a bigger deal and went into told than it actually was at the time but there was something about him, you know, being in charge of like who was using the tennis court at the time. and so the actual story is that he was supposed to be using the tennis court at a certain time and there was somebody on it. so it wasn't like he was in charge of the schedule. he and my grandmother were going to play and there was somebody using the court. so for, you know, it gets twisted in the press, that kind of thing. but it it really is. i mean, if he was an actually

detail oriented, you know, taking too much onto his own shoulders, then that kind of story wouldn't have been what people focused on it. it it is a fair criticism and that's an interesting criticism cause sometimes even even a strength, you know, being detailed or and can be turned against you in that way. you know, i just want to say one final thing about the georgia invasion. you talked about the peanut a-grade that went around the country. mr. carter was the first president from the deep south since before the civil war. and so when you think about, you know, how regional represents and plays a part in all that, we're that we're talking about about how presidents do what they do. now, obviously, most presidents have come from the east coast because that's all there was for, you know, the first half of the country. but but nevertheless, it's interesting that the south i think it was zachary taylor was the last, you know, before mr. carter. so i think it's interesting that there was that kind of a gap between and we won't you know, we won't do southern jokes like

we do california jokes, but still, i mean, there is there is something sort of regional about that that plays in interesting. so speaking of regions, let's hop to the midwest going back in time and speak with mr. eisenhower here about her grandfather, president eisenhower has two very important elections as well. one in 1952, one in 1956, and the one in 52, harry truman is outgoing as the president, but of course, he did not run. and so he was not defeated by by ike in that election. but he nevertheless sort of made made pretty short work of the democratic opponent at that time. so tell us a little bit about how your grandfather went about his important campaigns in 52 and 56. yes. and i'm going to bypass you just for a second. i need to say something about carter. i was i was working on capitol hill during the time that he was

running. and when he won washington got a terrible, terrible problem. the restaurants were all panicking because they did not have grits. true story. they were all scrambling to get grits in town. but anyway, back to granddad's story. he of course, he was ten years passed. world war two, which was his. probably what touched his heart more than anything was the service that he provided during world war two. and he a unique situation on on both elections in that he had the same opponent and in fact, i led an international organization for 25 years and i would meet people along the way and they'd say something like, your grandfather was the first

person either my parents voted for or i voted for, you know, some of them. and and i'd be. yes, yes, yes. and it was all very nice and then one guy come came up and said, you know, i voted for stevenson. and i said, well, that's all right. that's the two party system. you know, it's it's it's cool. and he said twice, i said, all righty. you know, but anyway, he he he lived, i think one of the ways that he could kind of compartmentalize all of this because as an actual grandfather i didn't know he was special until i got into the school and people started treating me like i had two heads. but he he had an uncanny ability to live in the moment with thought, if that makes sense. and i think that's probably, you

know, it's kind of like stevenson when somebody is punched down sometimes they just get up and start swinging again and i think that's kind of what happened. but granddad was just kind of slow and steady and just kind of i think he represented stability in that type of thing. and that's gave him the advantage. yeah, i don't know. no, that's it. i answer your question. yeah, no, absolutely no, that's that's great. and i had i had not i knew that stevenson was his opponent, both times. but, you know, that's the it's funny how that happens because in a way that same thing happened, you know, earlier with the two previous elections that i mean, truman only ran once in 48 against dewey, but dewey had also run against roosevelt in in 44. and so that he was the are the republican candidate then. so it is kind of interesting that you get the double and when we get to mckinley, we'll see the same thing as well, where he had the same same opponent twice. and you kind of wonder why a

party does that, you know, after somebody has lost to someone or, you know, you think, well, why would you you know, why would you go back to the back to the well? well, especially if the first term was successful. and, you know, i would venture say it was. yeah, right. yeah. but yeah. and he was he was big on that two party system. i will you forgive me for telling story. okay. well, we can hear both sides now, but i came home from school one day with you know, i think i might have told this last year. so if it's a repeat, i'm sorry, but i had heard two things about granddad that i thought were impossible. you know and of course, i knew him better than anybody in the world. and we lived. right on the edge of his farm.

so instead of that was back in the day when we walked home from school uphill both ways. but i went straight to his house right after school to verify this and. he was in his nap room because that's what he did at that time of the day. he was reading a western and i came up and i granddad, i heard two things about you that i just can't believe. and he put his book on his chest. he was laying down and took his glasses off and stuck it on the book. and he's looking at me like, what is she going to come up with? and i said, is it true that your name was really david dwight and that dwight david? and he said, well, yeah, but you know, there were so many davids in the family that got tired of being called, but so i, dwight and i said, okay, well, fair enough. and i said, now this one can't be true. were you really raised a

democrat? and he said, well, this is a two party. this country is in a two party system. and the democrats have been in power for a long time. and i thought, oh, here comes a lesson in civics. i'm really sorry. i ask at this point. and he said, he said and his biggest contender in the republican party was an isolation test, and that was her relative. and he said, so you know, after world war two and that kind of thing, he felt danger in that because, you know, the world was interacting, he said. so he chose the republicans instead, even though truman had even asked him to to run on the democratic ticket and and he volunteered to be his vice president. so that that was pretty cool. twice. yeah. oh, well, i just learned something. yeah.

the ticket that might have been you, right? so anyway, i said, well, granted, that's, you know, that all kind of makes sense. and, you know, i think a little bit less of you. but that's all right. and i said, but if he'd lost and he said, how's your weight coming along. and i never mentioned it again. and he didn't either. oh, that's great. just to mary jean's point, i think that's so interesting now because we always think of opposition research and knowing about your opponent within another party. and my grandfather will get to william howard taft later. my great grandfather. but my grandfather, robert taft, really was like a true public servant. he probably had the curse of a staff that he was a wonderful public servant, not the best politician. he was one of the greatest senators of our time. obviously, in both parties have said that about how totally objective and objective. i mean, i think if mr. republican got a presidential medal of honor and freedom from

john f kennedy, it's pretty unbiased. but he wouldn't in the first recipient. but i always thought so. robert taft actually ran for the republican nomination three times and i think that each time it wasn't necessarily opposites and research that came against him and he lived his life very transparently. so in his first bid for the republican nomination, they actually thought that he was too liberal, the far right, because he had supported a lot of the new deal initiatives since then. full circle. then later he's running against eisenhower and they think he's too conservative, because they think that he is isolationist, but it's just really this information that he put out there that was available to his opponent within his own party. it's carter's vote that was used against him. so it's just really not used against him. it used to show people, i guess, who they believed he was or paint a picture of why he would not be the best nominee for the party. so it is really interesting just to think about it within one's own party, how that information can be used and what's really interesting is to think about how those people who are on the

outs with their party, like taft and vandenberg and some of those and then some other celebrities like lindbergh and others who were isolationists would find themselves much more at home today, whereas people like ike might be on the outs in that. i mean, in terms of just the way even within parties, you know, we talk about opposition research, but there is an evolution to or a give and take ebb and flow, whatever you want to say within both parties. you know that people who maybe were on the outs at one time would in another era, had they lived, find themselves right down the middle. so that's kind of an interesting, interesting point as well. so jumping backwards from, you know, we've mentioned that truman and ike were, you know, contemplated being on a together now by the time of the 52 campaign, they weren't exactly on the best of terms. truman said this i've always appreciated this because, you know, ike is this incredible hero. he's this military leader. he's i mean, you know, won the

war in europe. i mean, he's just an amazing american. and everybody recognized that then as now. but truman just wanted to point one little thing out. he said, poor ike going to have a hard time being president. he's so used to giving orders and having people respond and so i think that, you know, definitely the general had a lot to offer his country as he had served, but also to the presidency. but but he and truman were not necessarily i think they were maybe even a little bit surprised that they were not on an on the same page. i mean, they i mean, the democrats realize that ike was even a republican. i mean, when they were making these overtures know to him. so i think that's kind of interesting. but he he really wasn't he didn't claim a party the whole time was in the military because they didn't in those days. right. yeah. and there's still, you know, people who i mean, i think of several of the last, you know, chairman of the joint chiefs and some of those people, i mean, they're very no matter who

appoints them, no matter what administration they serve or they they cross over other other, you know, parties. i mean, i think of general dunford, for example, who was appointed under i think was appointed under obama, but he served well into the trump era. and you know, general mattis, general kelly, some of those people, i mean, they they serve the uniform. they serve the country. they don't serve a party. some of them don't even to this day, some of them don't vote. you know, because they don't feel that they should have a hand in picking the commander in chief. i mean, it's just a and that's just a personal preference for some of. but they take it that seriously. so speaking of these great elections and clifton knows i'm a little bit biased about this because i think 1948 is one of the great electoral moments in american history. the whistle. stop campaign and harry truman's departure from traditional political campaigning, in that

it was always the role of a gentleman not to run for election, but to stand for election. and so you can go out and usually the surrogates would go out and speak for you. truman decided otherwise, and he hopped on the back of that train and he crisscrossed the country twice in two months. you know, that was when elections lasted two and a half months, not two and a half years, but nevertheless, he he got on that train and he went around the country and he took his case directly to the people. and he said, you know, i came out here so you could look at me, so you could listen to me, so you could get my thoughts, get my ideas, talk to us a little bit, clifton, about that moment and whether that season when was out on the on the road on the rails as it were, what kind of research was he doing in terms of i mean, was it was it about getting his own party up or was it about getting don't worry, we're not being attacked? i have i feel very confident

about that. i mean, i'm looking over at clinton. i think he would be panicked if something else were going on. we're good. we're good. okay. oh, it's a sunset celebration, you know. so they're celebrating the sunset. we're celebrating the presidency. it's great. we're all celebrating clinton. this is obviously a republican boat and a democrat both firing at each other. now. well, grandpa's research in for that election had not so much to do with the opposition. he knew the opposition to the do nothing 80th republican congress who he hammered at every speech. the research that they did was to research everywhere. they stopped and they stopped in small towns. crowds gathered, but they stopped and whistle stops. yeah. and the research that they did was on the people who live there and the issues that were important to them. so and they would give grandpa cue cards. they were just he had the stock speech in his head, but they would tell him before he pulled

in somewhere who, what the issues were there so he could get out on the platform and tell them this. this was i know what's wrong here. this is how i propose to fix it. you know, the democratic party has the right ideas and he launch into the stark speech about the do nothing 80th republican congress, which which turned out very effectively. and there's a there's that there's a bit of that in the play that give him hell, harry. play a lot of what the the author the playwright sam gallu did. he picked some he found some really good stuff. and one of them is absolutely true. somebody apparently shouted during one of these things, you know, not not to give him hell saying that was somebody shouted that from the crowd and grandpa said, i'm not giving him hell, i'm just telling the truth. and it feels like hell to them. and the other one was somebody asked, do you like giving these speeches? and apparently he actually wrote down at one point, well, i feel like the guy who was on his way to his wife's funeral and the funeral director asked him if he

wouldn't mind riding in the same car, his mother in law and the man said, well, i'll do it, but it's going to ruin my whole day. so he but he, you know, he i don't know why he even said that, because he he i think he liked giving speeches. he but he did for for two months. he crisscrossed the country, but that was where the research went in, was what was important to the folks there. and just being a plain spoken, you know, just telling them what he thought upfront all his ideas, what he planned to do and let them make decision. and it worked. i i in carrying family tradition, i went to i went to grade school with tom dewey's grandsons. they were much younger. and i think i joked one day about, you know, going downstairs and roughing him up or something as long as i was there are just going by their classroom and smiling and making a noise like a train whistle. yes, i didn't. yeah, that's good.

that was very big of me. yeah, that's that's good. that's good not to do that. you know, it's interesting to to think about the context of 48. and, you know, i always think about how and by the way, if you haven't been to independence, i got a little plug in here because we've just done a major renovation of the truman library and museum and, you know, when you walk through an exhibit like that and you see, in fact, that a whistle stop campaign component, it it's a it's a it's projected on the back of a train. and it is narrated by none other than clifton truman daniel. so you need to stop in and hear that. but what's interesting about it is it lays out that context where truman recognizes israel in the newton, the newly declare a state of israel in may of 48, he desegregated the armed forces and the federal workforce. in july of 48. and of course, then he jumps on the train in september to go crisscross the country and one of his advisers said to him, mr. president, you better be careful by recognize israel and desegregating the armed forces

and the federal workforce. you may well lose this election. and truman famously said, i'd rather be right than president and you know, can you imagine anybody saying that today? i mean, it's just and believable to me that that he was willing to risk his own political fortune, if that's what it meant, if that's what it took to do the right thing, that he was going to return to a moral core and not to polls or or, you know, personal opportunity. so anyway, i think that that stands really as a watershed moment in our electoral history, because, as clifton just mentioned, you know, the research being done was about how to connect to the public more so than how to defeat your opponent. and interestingly, he alluded to this, too. he did not really even mention dewey, he didn't even acknowledge him. he didn't run against dewey. he ran against that do nothing. 80th congress. but prior to that, in in four,

you know, speaking of research and opposition and divided parties, tell us a little bit about how your grandfather became vice president, because that's almost as interesting, if not more so than how he how he became president. he he tried everything he could think of to duck the job. he he did not want his own committee. i think they they he stepped out of the room and they nominated him behind his back to come back in and and, of course, the final straw was when bob hannigan, the democratic national committee chairman, called president roosevelt and said, i'm having a really hard time getting this guy on board and then held up the phone so my grandfather could hear roosevelt's response, which was, well, tell him if he wants to wreck the democratic party in the middle of a war, that's his responsibility. at which point, according to david mccullough, grandpa uttered a four letter word and accepted harry. he believed and i've always said

that the events of 1944 show us a very interesting example that history is, replete with examples of people being thrown out of office in 1944, we get a rare glimpse of someone being thrown into office, and i think that's really the only way to describe how harry truman ended up in the white house as he was. he was went kicking and screaming against as well. so jumping back a little further, let's let's talk about a couple of elections. patricia in in the early part of the 20th century, we have william howard taft, who comes to the presidency in 1908. that election as the hand-picked successor of teddy roosevelt and you know in his too bad the tweed roosevelt isn't here because i think we could really have a good time piling on to teddy roosevelt here because his treatment of taft is and they're in the same party again. but it's a little less than

aboveboard. what would you call it? the taft can't catch a break within our own party. robert h. have lost to dewey and eisenhower. and i'm truly and what's really interesting is just when you were saying get someone getting thrown into the presidency, i think that william howard taft, it could also be true for him. i always say that he never really wanted to be president. he truly wanted to be a supreme court justice, which he went on hold that position and i also think that william howard taft was a great president. i don't think he was a great politician. he basically presidential aspirations slayed greatly on, i would say his father and my great grandmother, helen taft. she wanted him to be president he did not want to be president. i don't think that if teddy if teddy roosevelt hadn't handed him the presidency, we would say i don't think that he would have really aspired for that at all. he loved being a public servant, but he didn't necessarily love the stress that came with being the president.

and he was someone that really, in terms of our three branches of government, he really was a big proponent for the judicial branch and the power that lay there and how really wasn't true. checks and balances, stem but it's so interesting to think about it because so many of taft's opponents and the democratic party at the time just said that he was teddy roosevelt's puppet. and it turns out that because william howard taft was not created playing the system, it turns out he wasn't so much teddy roosevelt's puppet and he went on to make some decisions when he was elected that did not really that teddy didn't approve of so much. but what's really interesting is when you think the role that ego played not to really lay into roosevelt, but it's been said that within like three or four months of choosing taft as his successor, roosevelt automatically was regretting his decision. he wanted to be president again. so if you think about that for a moment, there are also these two men that were great friends.

and then when taft is coming up for reelection again, roosevelt isn't very happy with him. he's already started turning on him, i would say probably like six months in. easy, easy. it said that between the election and the inauguration, taft and roosevelt did not speak it was sort of like it was over. roosevelt was sort of over having picked someone to follow him. he wanted to be still remain president. and then taft was sort of showing that he was more of an open minded, free thinker. but i would say that i think that taft was not as naive as people believe he was. and i think there's something to be said. the fact that he was consulting with teddy roosevelt constantly during that first election and then he sort of dropped off, says to me that he had his own plans. he sort of knew that roosevelt was using him or thought that roosevelt would be using him as a puppet, but that he had no intention of really following through with things that didn't align with his own belief system of what he thought was best for this country. the second election was it's so funny because very rarely within

a president's reelection and you not hear about someone's opponent from another party. and i think that all of the press coverage during that second election with taft, it really was rooted basically between this all out bloodshed, war that i think people don't realize happened back then, between he and tr, like tr went off and started his own party. things that now that we think are a little like crazy, but are when they happen today we're like that would never happen. it did happen. it happened. then. but i also think what's really interesting is because the two men were best friends, roosevelt and taft, there wasn't any opposition. research really needed and they used all of the information that they knew about each other already against one another. and what's also really interesting, going to taft, not to keep bringing it back to his wife, my great grandmother, but helen was said to really be like the political genius behind her husband. so she suffered a stroke very early on in his presidency, just a few months in, she had to re

teach herself how to speak, how to walk. but she came out of it and it's sad that when she did come out of it, she was in such shock because she had always been basically a huge advisor to william howard taft. and when she suffered from a stroke, he stopped consulting with her. and it's actually often been sad, at least within my family. that one of the reasons why that whole disruption with tr got to the point that it did was because taft was not consulting with howard taft. and what are the biggest things people laugh about is that helen taft brought the cherry blossoms to d.c. and she had the shoes died in this huge effort. and when the actual tree planting occurred, it was a very small ceremony which a lot of historians have always been puzzled by. but it's actually been said that the reason why it was so small is she was just so beside herself, like she came out of the stroke. she was fully recovered and she was so beside herself to hear what happened between william howard taft and tr and that he was not going to win reelection, that her wheels are actually she's like had bigger things to focus on. she was trying to salvage his presidency in any way, shape and

form. and i think that she sort of probably at the time probably was someone that did more opposition research, like she could have given more information on how he could have mended that relationship with. tr because i do remember james saying once that opposition used to be used also to like work with your opponent more. it gives you all the information on them and insight into their psyche and where they're coming from so that you can work together with them and and sort of not always used in that way. but when it confused that tool, it could it would be very useful. so i always think that helen taft, who news could have happened if she was advising him sort of that insight into tr and not just being led by ego a little bit. and it is interesting to think about how the presidents you know personal relationships with whether it's someone in their own party or handpicked successor in the case of taft or an opposition or someone like, you know, teddy kennedy who you might have assumed would be a little more sympathetic and little more helpful to carter, because, you know, when people

go through a bruising primary, i mean, the the opponents cheer me, right. because they think, great, they're doing the heavy lifting for us. they're running the guy down. and then we'll just come along and, you know, kick him the rest of the way off the off the ledge or whatever. and and i think that but in my reading, i think that taft chenu commonly felt sorrow around the demise of that relationship. and i think, you know, he said, i saw a friendship. how did he put it? it was sort of poetic. it went away like as a rope of sand. i mean, just was something that just slipped away from him. and he he tried to, you know, any any any wrung his hands about it. you know, he would say, like, should i send him a note? should i send a gift? and then he would. and roosevelt snub him and not send something back. and it was sort of, you know, roosevelt leaves and goes to africa right after the the the inaugural. and trying to kind of get out of the way and immediately starts corresponding with people about all the things taft is doing wrong and how he's really thinking of throwing his hat in the ring. and he's really frustrated by

it. well, it's super similar to that quote you said i'd rather be right than president and william howard taft. he made a lot of decisions that weren't always popular with the general public and also or with his own party. it was the public was not someone that necessarily had an issue with him. but it's just interesting to think that this relationship between these two men was turned from mentors. yep. really did turn to sorrow. and i think i said this last year, but it's just when teddy roosevelt passed away. taft went to visit his gravestone and it was raining and pouring, as massie always likes to remind us, the very dramatic moment. i mean, this really was the stuff of movies, their relationship, their relationship. and he hung his hat and he sort of had a moment of just surrender to roosevelt and. it's been documented and is a true moment of just sort of like a civility moment that like we didn't always agree and we had this horrible, contentious relationship and we used almost everything that we could against one another. but at the end of the day, they had a relationship allowed taft to serve as president, and he

did a lot of good during that time, even if it didn't always end in the best manner. yeah, and i just want to support what you said about him being a great president. i had a political science professor as an undergraduate who said william howard taft was his favorite president for the way that he conducted himself. and i think what stands out to about taft, especially today, is the way what he believed and what he did were so closely aligned. i mean, he did not back away from his principles. and, you know, he had kind of sort of weird space because, you know, roosevelt and wilson were both progressives. and taft is that sort of what we consider today? probably a true well, i don't know what we consider a true conservative, but i mean, we would consider him like a laissez faire, like less government, less involvement, less whatever. and i think that he he really was that and he really believed that and he governed accordingly. but he was also a great public servant in that when when roosevelt was in office and taft

was in the philippines or abroad, he had opportunities to come back and pursue his judicial dream, really. and but he said, no, i need to finish up what i'm doing. i can't i can't abandon these people here now. and i think, again, his own personal, much like he said of truman, his personal ambition, he suppressed in order to serve the public good and i think that's a rarity delay, too much into roosevelt but it just in terms of a lot of people these days i think run for president. the role of being president it's very ego driven. but taft was not ego driven. he really thought that our democracy was at risk and that what he was doing was he was protecting our constitution because roosevelt for a minute came up with some i mean, he was well intentioned, but he came up with a little bit of wild ideas that like maybe the executive branch could overturn some judiciary and things into taft. that was just like a slippery slope, not in the direction that you would want to go in. so and like i said, he hated being president mean. that's why he was so large when

he was in prison. he just feeling like he really did it. we laugh, but he did so he really didn't love that position. he was really doing what he thought was best for the country. and i think that is a real tool. but he also used he wasn't a saint like he's a lot of quotes that teddy roosevelt had used for him in the initial election against him in a lot of his campaign work and things. so there was like one campaign ad. i think that had a photo of teddy roosevelt and made it sound like basically he was this dictator that was trying to go on the set. he just thinks of his owed a third term. and then underneath it was a quote, raving about william howard taft and how he was the best man for the from teddy roosevelt underneath it. so just sort of that breadth of knowledge of knowing your opponent, like i think that's also really interesting because i don't know if politicians really are that close to one another anymore. so you need opposition research even more now. yeah, yeah. no, i think that really was a true friendship on roosevelt side, too, but i definitely

think that it is a classic example of an ego becoming more important than almost anything else. i mean, it really was roosevelt really overreached since then. some really, you know, sort of dramatic ways, i mean, in trying to take the presidency back from taft, it doesn't it doesn't look good. i mean, it didn't it didn't play very well for him historically. i don't think i mean, for all the great things that roosevelt did and for all the just personality and but he was, you know, roosevelt just sort of i remember, you know, we've mentioned david mccullough. mccullough said that someone had gone to meet president roosevelt when he was in the white house and and the person who's this was said, oh, you got to meet the president. how interesting. so you had an audience of the president. what did you tell president? and he said, i him my name. and that was pretty much it. and then he listened. but anyway, going back.

just prior to those elections i mean, just leaving roosevelt, skipping roosevelt, going back into mckinley, we have these two great elections in 1896 and in 1900 with william and again mckinley is a very interesting character for a couple of reasons as well. he more or less at least some scholars have argued, invented the primary system that we have today. i mean, it was kind of a hodgepodge thing. he and of course, roosevelt continues with that. and that's sort of what gave roosevelt the opportunity or the opening or whatever you want to say to sort of go with the bull moose party and do do some of the things he did counter to taft, but talk to his mass, see a little bit about about william mckinley and what he does to get elected in 1896. and how, again, he has the same opponent, william jennings bryan, both both times.

kind of an interesting theme and interesting. happenstance, i guess, in american politics. but talk to us a little bit about how that how that when both those elections. sure. so william mckinley was the last civil war president to actually serve in the union and the union army. and a lot of people don't they don't remember that. and i think that service really led him to have the public service life that he had. he came from a small town in canton, ohio. he served in the military. he was a private. and then he became under the command of of hayes, rutherford b hayes, who was a brigadier general at the time. and hayes took him under his wing. and they said, you know, you you you serve your country well, and i'll look out after you're you know, during the remainder of the civil war and at the very end of the civil war, he became

a major. and i think that that particular title, william mckinley, really kind of he held that in great reverence because, you know, he'd he'd been a congressman. he'd been the governor of the state of ohio and then he'd also been president. but i think he really, really he he really had reverence for that title. but getting to the election of 1896, it consequential and monumental for two reasons. and curtis alluded to that the primary system really kind of started with that election. but more importantly, mckinley kind of invented the front porch campaign where the candidate would actually speak off the front porch of home or a home. the country that he was campaigning for. and i have firsthand knowledge of my great grandfather actually going to several of those front

porch campaigns, not only in and canton, ohio, but also in the state that i'm a. originally from thomasville, georgia. and he actually followed him several times during that time frame. and followed the campaign. but truly, thousands of people would come to the home and they would actually stand and listen for this. these orations go on for hours. and william mckinley wouldn't give the oration entire time. there'd be other politicians, but people would actually sit on the ground or they would have chairs that they would bring and they would listen to this campaigning for 4 hours on their own. but the funny thing about that campaign was the actual house that's the national first ladies historic site house is that was actually and ida mckinley's home. and the funny thing about that they then that they actually live in that home at the time

because they didn't want a lot of the people knowing that people would come and knock on the door all hours of the night and they would be, you know, interrupted. and she was at that particular time had started to become epileptic. so she had, you know, a lot of health problems. but they actually lived like two streets over in a house that was similar to that. but a lot of people did not know that so after the campaign and speech, they would retire back to the back of the house and then go round street two blocks and they would be at their house, but it really and truly that the election of 1896 with preparing william mckinley and william jennings bryan really kind of focused on two great things gold standard. william the silver standard for william jennings bryan and the gold standard prevailed because william mckinley won that election in 1896. but one of the interesting

things about that election was the fact that the republican party went after, you know, labor, which was unheard of because, you know that is a democratic today. it's a democratic, you know, campaign trough. and i think william mckinley changed that because and i think that's one of the major reasons why, as mckinley was a congressman, he was also known as a very protectionist. and they placed tariffs on all these coming into the country because mckinley was raised, you know, a very middle class family. and he had a heart for middle class people in the working people. so i think the 1896 election was definitely it resounded with the people. and you kind of saw that election kind of come away from the actual populist candidate, which was william jennings bryan. and and then fast forward to the election of 1901, when william

mckinley, with the the egomaniac as a lot of people like to say, teddy roosevelt, he actually ran with him that again. and then william jennings bryan was the democratic candidate for that as well. but sadly, after that election, mckinley didn't live too long after that and was assassinated in buffalo, ohio. the buffalo exposition, and therefore he had the springboard for teddy roosevelt. and i think that it really set him up for a great presidency, because the economy was depressed before the election of 1896 and after the election of 1896, we saw economic prosperity and he you know, that was where was a resounding success all over the country. so you really saw a dynamic between the election of 1896 and 19 one america, the people

really saw sound and had an able hand in william mckinley and. the election of 1896 was really a great win, but 1901 was really an even better win because people had confidence and william mckinley and the economic prosperity that we that we had, that during that period of time. and it's it's interesting to to think you. so how did why did he run with a different vice president? well, two things. one is it wasn't necessarily uncommon to switch, you know, to like in the case of truman, you know, the vice president was there they just didn't want him. and so they they wanted somebody else. they didn't want the person who was there. in the case of mckinley, of course, his vice president had died in office. and it's interesting to think about how many in our history, especially back in the 19th century, when there just is nobody in the vice presidency. i mean, there's there was no mechanism to to replace a vice president. so the speaker of the house, of course, is the next in line.

but that's different now because of the amendment to the constitution. but before that there were a lot of times when we did not have a vice president that office. so so when what was it was a whole bath was that whole bath died then mckinley have a vice president for the rest of time and he chooses new york governor teddy roosevelt to be his running mate and then the election of 1900. and that's how sort of vaults into that much like truman. i mean, you know, it's it's sort of interesting people just the luck, the draw kind of being in the in the wrong in the right place, the wrong at the right time, i guess, depending on how they looked at it. so thank you all for that for that sort of overview of the elections that you're that you're progenitors. the play to played a role in i'd like to think now about these examples that we've just heard and i'd like to think about what applications might we have? you know, we started out, james, talking about opposition research and how important it

was to, you know, as you said, just information. and then the campaign does with it what it will if if your grandfather, great grandfathers were here today. and i don't i'm not seeking a comment about our current election or cycle or whatever. but just in general, we think about campaigns today and how our campaigns operate what lessons do you think we can from these, you know, five examples that we've just heard. what kinds of things we don't figure in any particular order? i'm going to call on you but but what kinds of things do you think are take from the you represent that might help us both as a public and as candidates today to maybe have a little stronger system, a little more faith in our system than we than we seem to have at moment. go ahead, machine. one of the major differences, of course, is the division that's going on right now, i think we a

nonpartisan way can can attest that our ancestors are maybe not so far back. were you 19 you know they they could talk solutions they talked they didn't talk doom and gloom there was an optimism there that that doesn't seem to exist today or if it does is very limited. and i think that is probably one of the most important because. you know, i don't know about anybody, but i watch the news and i'm down for the day. i watch murder. she wrote instead, you know, the good guys win that that's a that's a great insight, though, about optimism. i mean, i think that's very a i think from from the founding, an american trait in some ways. i mean, it's not i mean, it's a universal trait, but i mean, very interesting to think about how optimism has played such an important role in in the polity our republic in a democracy, because it's just an agreement. right. we just all agree we're going to

follow some rules and we're going to live by a certain and we're going to do certain things a certain way. and so your your progenitors were uniters. i mean, they were people who said we have to be together as a country. and they and they did that largely, even though there's some kind of shenanigans that goes on, you know, to try and kind of get, you know, to run somebody down a campaign. once that's done, there's always been this sense of healing, this sense of like, we're optimistic. we're all americans. we have more in common. and people say that. but but you don't you get that. you don't get that sense as much. well, you know, i remember. as a kid. well, you can imagine we found out president kennedy won. and i was in the white house when that, you know, it's like a shroud dropped over the whole, you know, my sister susan looked at me and said he won, you know, and it like a terrible thing. but once he was inaugurated and, you know, took office, we became

americans there was none of this. he's not my president he was my president. you know, whether i agreed, you know, whether we agreed with him and that was true. the whole family, including granddad, you know, and kennedy would go to the hospital granddad, had heart trouble and he end up in the hospital from time to time and kennedy would go and get counsel from him, you know, it was just a whole different way of working together. that doesn't seem to exist right now. what else? what can you tell us, james? i also think campaigns are so impressive arsenal now it's all huge. television ad buys online targeting with, you know, and to either raise money or get certain issues there. i think there's still room for a personal touch. you know, you can still get a a large group volunteers and go

and make a difference on the ground. i know in 2008, obama had that that, you know, just people that had never volunteered before that were volunteering and going out and and doing things and that made a difference outside of the mainstream media in television and and things like that. and i think that it's important to have something beside ads just the 24 hour news cycle to be involved in the campaign. because the more that we give up on the other things the more that the narrative is already going to be set for the entire campaign. if you just watch and even depending on what channel you watch, you're campaign narrative will be completely different from somebody watching another channel, but also so few people

will have had a will have made the put that narrative together. it's not like a groundswell of this certain thing that's growing in the country or whatever. it's a certain people that are very targeted to put this narrative out or this other narrative out. and i, i think that that's it makes campaign scenes boring. i think that it it separates people from the candidates like they're they're not people anymore. they're characters. and i think that it's not i mean, i think it's to our detriment that that's happening. and i think it's even dangerous. i mean, these last comments are very interesting to me that campaign used to be more personal and driven by optimism. and now they're impersonal and

driven by pessimism. i mean, so so what's motivating us and i guess is a reflection of us as a people. what motivates us now is fear and anger, as opposed to some some sort of optimism or a belief in something greater petty and just thinking about that, even though we say i was pretty dark between tr and taft and that was really campaign based on fear mongering, we see they got both of them. neither one of them ended up back in the white house. but i think it also can be used sort like to your point to think about optimism because, think about that. that was probably one of the most like bloodshed, elections that we've probably had. taft wasn't even on the ballot for up for reelection in two states in california and. one of the dakotas. so if you think about that, that was really like a bloodshed. it dark and all those things. but we came out of it and we didn't hear about things. we had elections that were pretty civil to some degree following that. so even you feel like you're

losing hope right now and you feel discouraged, just like as an everyday citizen, because the news is so doom and gloom and people are really saying horrible things about one another. i think that's just to look at that and see that we were able to come back from that as a country to give us all some degree of hope and also just thinking of not taking it back to robert taft. robert taft to dewey. he lost to eisenhower. he was part of that republican congress that truman had to work with. but when truman went to make the state voluntary, we went to make the state of israel. it really robert taft, who really encouraged him to move forward with that initiative. and he really someone that worked across the aisle and so even to think about that, they're these people people can lose elections and still go on to serve their constituent if they really have their heart in the right place. so i think i'll for for all of us know there are many great examples like that. i mean, taft is one, vandenberg is another. the truman out to. and they really across the

aisle, you know, they didn't agree about elections and they were happy to say so on campaign. but when it came down to actually governing, they recognized that that was their job. that's what they had to do. and they and they formed friendships around that. it's just like your colleagues, you know, i mean, they, they, they, they felt that way about it you know he's thinking massie about the primary system and how it was a it solved problem at the time and so it it was a system that worked but increasingly we hear people talking about it more it being part of the problem as opposed to part of the solution. and i wonder if it's tied into of what we've said here about it being personal, about it being optimistic and having become less so because the primary system is now it seems to me in both parties that we're we're recruiting the deck is sort of stacked in the favor. the more extreme elements of both parties win in these primaries. and i wonder if you have any, you know thoughts about that or any lessons we can learn from sort of the mckinley approach to

the primary? well, i mean, i personally think that, you know, all presidents represent one common theme. they ran for the right reasons. they ran on integrity and honesty and the you know, the ability serve someone as a whole, you know we serve one country and all americans. and i think if you can take away anything, i think mckinley, eisenhower, taft, carter, truman, they all did that with one accord. and that's i think we've gotten away from that. where where you see candidates today and self-serving and in many cases and they they don't they don't have the interests of the american people and the prosperity of american people at heart. and that's something that we've lost. nicely said for sure. we have a question or two here that has come in from the

audience. and i've just this just in just been handed hot off the press. so i'd like to ask each of you, what do you think is the biggest or what you would consider to be the most important contribution that your ancestor made to the presidency? i mean, to the presidency as an institution, to the presidency as as a part of our constitutional order. what did what did your ancestor contribute to to the office of the presidency? go ahead. um, my grandfather made human rights a part of our foreign policy and had never been considered. and the the presidents that we have had since have have either, you know, focused on it more or less, depending on the person. but it's always consideration now and, i think that's an important legacy that he's left

on the office and on our policy. excellent. and that's a great that's a great example. others jump in putting. william howard taft know not many people knows that he really opened the white up to the people prior to his presidency. you couldn't attend an event there if you weren't a socialite, even if you were a public servant, even if you were a senator or congressman, did it matter? and when howard taft took office, he and his wife, one of their true initiatives, was to open up the house. you could prior to that, you couldn't attend. if you were divorced. all of these crazy things. so i think it is the president truly does serve all americans, like massie said, and just you can't you have to walk the walk if you talk talk. and if you're supposed to be serving all americans and all americans to be able to attend events at, the white house and it seems like something very trivial. and i could go on and on about how william howard taft was a president of many firsts, all those things. but i really think that that is one of the smaller things that he did that, really had one of the largest impacts.

um, for my grandfather. i think that were two things. one that he, he had the ability to look well, he always said the only thing new in the world is the history. you don't know. but he was one of the he was a president who learned from that, especially it came to post postwar europe, postwar world to look ahead to what we might be facing in the future and put institutions in place, put nieto in place. the marshall plan, rebuild our enemies to create a more stable world. and so very forward thinking. but i and i say this over and over and over again, i think the best thing did for the presidency was to show this country that a a farmer, a small businessman, a citizen soldier can rise to the highest office in the land and do a better job of it than almost anybody else.

except for your grandfather's. and i also think i also think tweed roosevelt call earlier next year right right. i think that granddad did what clifton said. you know truman and eisenhower were cut from the same cloth, no doubt it. and that's probably one of the reasons they even had a rift to begin with, because, you know, both midwesterners and salt of the earth guys, but granddad also contributed a lot of mechanical things to the president. see, for example, the interstate highway system that was originally a defense system. you know, it was called the u.s. highway defense system, and it was designed in case of we had to mobilize, in the case of war

and a lot of people don't know this. i've been told it's a myth, but i think it's because it's still classified. but, you know, you didn't it from me. but every five miles, there's a mile of straight interstate designed to be a runway in case of mobilization issues. and i can remember the family in the in the white talking about it and mother said, you know, she saw the rendering and stuff like that. she said, it looks like something from outer space. and daddy says, well you know, granddad did not have a driver's, but he had a pilot's license and he said, what are you going to do, just land somewhere and fill her up? you know, and anyway, so it yeah, granddad got his license when he was 74 years old, but he didn't need one for that. mean i deviate.

yeah, there's kind of a funny story about he was retired to gettysburg by the time he got his license and he was gettysburg is most recognizable citizen and he would get behind that thing and there was still a little military led left in his foot and he he'd go flying through the battlefields of gettysburg right. and he'd get stopped almost every time. and they they'd just go, you know, please, sir, please, you know, give us a break. you know, they never they really arrested him. but day we were at the farm and chief of police drops in and they go back to grant is kind of the equivalent of a man cave. it was one room my grandmother let him have and they had some iced tea there in a they came back out and, you know, shook hands and the chief of police left and all that said, what was that all about? and he said, he suggests, i find a different hobby hobby, but he

there were a lot of things that he created that kind of were systematic, you know, you know, he was he was into civil rights and that type of thing, too. but, you know, hawaii in. alaska became states on his watch and. well, i have to say, people to people, you know, 25 years, why is it you know, and things like that? but they always people people to people was very important because he felt like the resilience of the everyday person. you know, you and i talk and all of a sudden, you know, i think a 17 year old said it to him best you don't pick up a gun against your friend and it just cuts through. and then you work on mutual

interests and you reach an understanding and that kind of thing. and he he believed in that whole philosophy. he created a lot of them. ngo well committees on government things that turned into ngos later that were exactly that. they were the eisenhower fellows where it was an exchange student exchange program overseas. there was the general assembly at columbia college in new york. there was as well the eisenhower institute was actually taken from money that he had used to start a college, and they sold the college and i started the eisenhower institute. but all these organizations that he had a direct hand in were all meant to bring all together by heart. and, you know, optimism and hope and that kind of thing. so. i think mckinley can be

remembered for two things. the beginning of a great military might, because the spanish-american war was won. he he reelect only agreed to go to war with spain. but i think the world knew that they had a superpower on the on the brink and that i don't think he wanted to do bad but he definitely wanted people to know that america would protect its people and do the right thing. so firstly, the military might and then secondly, i think the prosperity that began in 1896 has continued. and that's why we enjoy a lot of the economic prosperity that we have today is because of his efforts about all police, all that, all of your grandfathers did to really, you know, think about the 20th century being referred to as the americans century. and you think about every one of

your forebears had to do with making that a reality. you know, the economic prosperity, the building up of the military. i mean, i think of, you know, the truman's decisions. naito the kinds of things that happened after the war, putting together that postwar order around world, you know, i mean, think about taft in the way he served, you know, all over the world, even he was president. and obviously, you know, ike, the free world. i love james. his comment about his grandfather's you know, incorporating human rights into our diplomacy and into who we are as a people and reflecting something that was latent but had never been articulated in that way before. i got a question from the audience here, and it's actually directed specifically to you, mary jean, about grandfather's planning of d-day specifically and sort of his making process. and i wanted to sort of expand that question to all of you and give you one last or one last statement about about decision

making. because what presidents do you know, we've talked about their campaigning, their elections. that's a series of of decisions as well. but then once they win those elections, they have to make a lot of really important decisions. and what can you tell us each just briefly about what you know about it started down there and work our way down to what do know about how your ancestor approached. you know the anatomy of a decision how they sort of took things apart and sort of thought about. his he wanted a minute to think mary jane i can see that from here no i didn't maybe didn't phrase it you know you i says please please know i think again mckinley really really thought hard and long before america entered the spanish-american and congress kept pushing the newspapers kept pushing him to you know, to go war. and he really reluctantly

decided to do it. so i think the decision making was a long, hard process. he really, you know, thought a lot of his generals and thought a lot of their their input. and i think he gathered all that information. then he finally came to the decision that we had to get involved in order to to rectify this war. so i really think, you know, the spanish-american war was really the very first examples that i can that i can recall, that it was a long, hard process for him to come to terms that we should fight that war. i think i'll stick with d-day because it really was kind of it was a big one, even though he wasn't president yet. but. he, first of all, believed in the resilience of the people that he was working with, the troops and that kind of thing. he honestly looked at them like they were his sons and he was

also very willing to accept responsibility for the decisions that were charged of him. and as you may or may not know, he spent the night with the troops night before they deployed from common to normandy and they were walking around and talking. and there's a there's a fairly famous picture where he's talking to another soldier number 23, he had a tag with 23. and he's he's like this talking to the soldier looking very intense. and they actually made a postage stamp out of that one. and somehow he ended up taller than the soldier not really sure how that happened. but anyway and it was before photoshop but he about i don't know in 1990 i met number 23 and i said, your picture has been on

my father's desk, my grandfather's desk and on a postage stamp. now, you know, i've never seen my grandfather, you know, youngest of four. we could do no, i never saw my grandfather so intense. i said, what was he talking about? and he said, well, we were talking about the fishing in saginaw and you he he walked and put everybody at ease and tried to make it as easy as possible, but still and that came back to it came back to roost or, you know, whatever the expression is. i went to normandy on the 60th anniversary of d-day. and, you know, that's one place where the the hallow, the the quick and the dead walk together. and i was not announced or anything like that. i was just on point and i was looking at the blast. and i was wondering the how the troops ever got to the bluff and this old guy who was obviously a

veteran, a, came up behind me and he said, yeah, you know he he just started talking. he said out of my he that i went in to clear the woods early and he said out of my unit of 15, only five survived. and he said and now only three are living in the other two can't travel and i said, well, and the person that i had been with had dropped back to it to give me some quiet to reflect it. and i could see him up and i know he was to introduce me and i, i did one of those because i wanted to hear what he was really thinking and. he said, but, you know, he said, i think there's about nothing we wouldn't have done for ike. and. i'll never forget a puff of wind went on my face and i could see

his wife behind with my friend and she goes so he didn't know while i was there. but she did. but it just but you you see that that compassion and all pay off many, many, many years later. you know, you realize that the decisions he was were very you know, i'm not sure i could make those decisions. and he wrote a letter or a note the night the night before, after all the planning was done and it started, you the weather was going to be inclement and they knew it and. they couldn't decide whether or not to go in. he wrote on a piece of paper and i'm paraphrasing now but in the event of failure, if there if there's any blame to place, you know, the troops everything they

were supposed to everybody did everything they were supposed to. the fault is mine. and mine alone. and somebody said, well, why don't you go out there and spend the night with the troops. and he said, because i knew that i was sending over half of them to their deaths. and i felt like they deserved the right to see the man that was doing it. i mean, that's hard to follow. i was specially when you have someone that like eisenhower who's so like emotionally invested as a leader should be. i think that william howard taft was emotionally invested well, but all of his decisions really came from protecting the constitution. he was an attorney. he was a judge, had served in so many other roles prior to the presidency. and honestly, i think that i

like to call william howard taft the anti totalitarian. so even the frivolous that he did in his presidency that appeared frivolous, he really was trying to humanize the presidency. so i joked he was the president of many firsts because he was the first president to golf publicly is crazy at the time and the first president to throw out pitch at a baseball game. his wife was the first to ride alongside him following his inauguration, and he was the first person to actually replace the fleet of horse drawn carriages at the white house with automobiles. but that really was just linked to the fact that he was trying to humanize the president and show that it was someone that an everyday person, all of these things, everyday people do a president could do that as well. and that he represented the everyday person. william howard taft went on was the only president to serve office following his presidency as supreme court justice and i always say that it truly was for him, that it was the power of

being able to protect our constitution and make decisions really protected our. checks and balance system is what really gave him true happiness, not just the pure executive power and william howard taft did a lot of things that were popular. he instituted the federal income tax. hey and i know i try to keep that under wraps. don't talk about it too much. since he was isolation. well was a fun. but he did the federal income tax. he's one of the reasons roosevelt wasn't very with him was that he was really hard on protecting tariffs and making sure that a lot of large did not get the breaks that they were expected to receive that had been promised to them under roosevelt. but that's because taft always went back to like legality of things. i think that if you follow a certain rule book or just your own guidance in, the constitution sort of that you can only make so many wrong

decisions, right. if you're following what we're supposed to be following as united states citizens and leaders, then your decision making can only go so far off. it may not always be popular, and it might not always be what people want to see, but not going to be the wrong thing to do. and interestingly, there's that ebb and flow from, you know, it goes back to hamilton and jefferson, right? the kind of strict construction versus loose construction. and that has been something that we've seen, you know, back and forth. and as i say, depending on the era you're in, you know, maybe you're in or maybe you're out, but but i think you're absolutely right that william howard taft truly has to be considered one of the great champions of the constitution in in our presidential history. wonderful. mr. carter carter. well, my grandfather was a naval officer and, an engineer. so. way of solving problems was to gather all the facts that were

available and to very precisely them to come up with the right solution based on the priorities that he set, because there's never there's, never one solution that's going to solve every problem. so you have to solve the ones that your priorities first based on that, which is again, i'll talk about the hostage crisis. he decided not to campaign. my grandma mother was not for idea she would always ask him, you know, i go out if you should just go out and make a speech in this state, go and make it speech in this way. and he would tell her, you know what if i that and tomorrow, you know, one of the hostages is killed because i mean, they had

made it clear to him that he wasn't super like. that was one of the conditions. right there. he's not supposed to go out and gloat or do anything. he's supposed to be low key, which is, you know, and but his priority was getting the hostages back. his priority was not winning reelection. if it had been the way around, i believe that decision would have been different. if the priority was getting reelected. he would have been campaigning regardless of what might happen. and i just think it was you know it's that analytic thing which one has the highest chance of coming up with the outcome that matches the priorities i've set for task and that's the way he approached every problem you

know. well and that that dovetails with my grandfather the same idea and i i'll go back to i mean he gathered as much information as he could from as many as he could, whether they were allies or opposed. he wanted to hear everything before he made a decision and i'll go back to one of the first in fact, the first truman legacy symposium we had here that bob wills back in 2003, our three guests were three truman staffers. george elsey and ken hechler and milton cole and thank you, ed and. george. elsie told me the story about, my grandfather's decision making. he said he would to grant, but they had a problem. he would bring solutions. i mean, all put together by the staff. and george would bring grandpa the solutions and go through them. he'd say, well, if you pick a you're going to make the democrats happy. if you pick the, you're going to

make the republicans happy. if you pick see you're going down the list and grandpa would say, george, which one solves the problem? and he'd say, well, that's easy, but you're going to -- everybody off if you do that. and that's the one grandpa chose solving. but as you said, that you can't solve the problem for everybody. you pick the solution that makes the most sense for the most people. and and you do it for the vast majority of americans, not for special. for ladies and gentlemen. if, as a as i thank these panelists, i'd doing this. i learned so much and it's such a great opportunity. but i want you to think about what you've seen display here tonight. i mean, think about what this society of four presidential descendants does and can do. the presidency matters, history matters. and you take away anything from tonight, i think, what you've heard is optimism,

bipartisanship and friendship and that they represent so well. and you think about can you imagine where we would be if people today embrace those qualities, if truly bringing people together around a hopeful, positive, constitutionally sound message and in a bipartisan way for support and above all, being showing friendship and and compassion toward people. they're in your own party or the other as an opponent to see your opponent as as an opponent for a season, not an enemy for your life. and i think that is something that i so respect. this this group and what they represent. and are there are hundreds of other descendants that you don't see here that are part of this organization. and so i applaud you all for what you've done. thank you for being here tonight. and let me turn it over to mr. clinton curry.

all right. i had to back up just a skosh there. sorry about that. thank you very much. and thank you very much to the descendants. what spectacular evening, wonderful conversation. thank you. the key was harry truman foundation was created with the mission to preserve the harry truman little white house. florida's only presidential museum and programing that supports civic management. its civic engagement, education, and the historical and cultural influences of the truman era. now, as mentioned, this is our second year of our essay competition, partnering with the society of presidential descendants descendants for monroe county high school students. now, in order for monroe county high school students to apply, they have to, of course, be a high school student monroe county and current they have to have performed verified community service and verified by their school counselor to be

able to enter into the competition. the topic for this year's essay competition again was political maneuvering, the powerful influence of the presidency students were required to provide at least one example of an america and president using the power of presidency to achieve one of their goals. i will now ask the descendants that have been assigned clifton's going to award our third place winner tonight. massee mckinley is going to award our second place winner and patricia taft our first place winner. when i ask for you to please call upon the young lady or young man that has received the award and with third place thank you. clinton i just want to say real quick, first, all of these essays were good. these kids really write. they were a pleasure to read every one of them. but the third place winner is caroline garfield.

and and like president garfield, she's not here. yeah, i. i will add that caroline was unable to get off of work tonight, so she is at she is at her job, and she has it. she does have a good excuse. so so, yes. and she trying to but yes, unfortunately, unable to just receive words. so second place, massie right there. the second place winner of essay contest goes to jordan lubis lubis. and miss patricia taft. if you would, please.

our first place winner goes to angie herrera. yanis yanis. yeah, yeah. now as we become to the to the conclusion of tonight's presentation, one of the things that know as we attend programing all throughout the country and to different different organizations is engaging in civics at the young, at the with the with our youth. here's a great example. so thank you very much for participating and congratulations. well done. thank you. well deserved. so, ladies and gentlemen this does conclude tonight's

presentation. and we are still going to be on the grounds are going to have some music. the bar is open here to the left and a little bit of engagement amongst the night. thank you very much. thank goodness for the weather held out. and no one wanted to laugh at me. so my life would be a dream if i could take you out. the paradise of about seven below me, darling, i'm the only one that you love. life, liberty. on, on and on.

they know that my girls are getting. we have that we ought to be. could you lower those signs, please? i have some very sad