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Feb. 17, 2025 10:02-11:31 - CSPAN

01:28:52

Washington Journal Washington Journal

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Main

john mcardle

cspan 19:06

Appearances

addison mcdowell

rep/r 00:44

brandon gill

rep/r 00:32

sarah mcbride

rep/d 00:55

Clips

barack obama

d 00:02

bill clinton

d 00:02

donald j trump

admin 00:09

george h w bush

r 00:02

george w bush

r 00:04

jimmy carter

d 00:03

martin caidin

00:05

ronald reagan

r 00:01

Callers

errol darts in unknown

callers 00:04

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Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		Something for every C-SPAN fan.
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		C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered.
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		comcast supports c-span as a public service along with these other television providers giving you a front row seat to democracy good morning It's Monday, February 17th, 2025, President's Day in the United States.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And though designated in the federal calendar as George Washington's birthday, the holiday's proximity to Abraham Lincoln's birthday linked the two and eventually expanded the holiday to a celebration of all American presidents.
		So this President's Day, we're asking our viewers, who's your favorite president and why?
		Phone line split as usual by political party for you to call in this morning.
		Republicans, it's 202-748-8001.
		Democrats, 202-748-8000.
		Independents, 202-748-8002.
		You can also send us a text, that number, 202-748-8000.
		If you do, please include your name and where you're from.
		Otherwise, catch up with us on social media.
		On X, it's at C-SPANWJ on Facebook.
		It's facebook.com/slash C-SPAN.
		And a very good Monday morning to you.
		Happy President's Day.
		You can go ahead and start calling in now.
		As you're calling in, we take you to the Desiree News, their opinion piece this weekend encouraging Americans to study Washington and Lincoln on President's Day.
		They write in that piece.
		Other presidents have, of course, done noble things and guided the nation through perilous times, but none was as foundational as Washington and Lincoln.
		They were, of course, not perfect men, they write.
		They succeeded despite their imperfections and because of their humility and their trust in God.
		The nation's first president set the tone for the job and for the nation's collective identity.
		The 16th made preservation of the Union non-negotiable and he laid the foundation for a modern America.
		The Desiree News, their piece that was published yesterday each year beginning back in 1896, a member of the United States Senate has read from George Washington's farewell address.
		That reading taking place on the floor of the Senate.
		It's going to happen tomorrow afternoon.
		Last year, it was outgoing Senator Ben Cardin, Democrat from Maryland, who read George Washington's farewell address.
		These were the final words of that address.
unidentified		With me, a predominant motive has been to endeavor to gain time to our country, to settle and mature its recent institutions, and to progress without interruption to that degree of strength and consistency, which is necessary to give it, humanly speaking, the command of its own fortunes.
		Though in reviewing the instances of my administration, I am conscious, I'm unconscious of intentional error.
		I'm nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors.
		Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend.
		I shall also carry with me the hope that my country will never cease to view them with indulgence.
		And that after 45 years of my life dedicated to his service with the upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		The farewell address of the nation's first president yesterday, the nation's 47th president, was at the Daytona 500 following the previous weekend when he was at the Super Bowl in New Orleans.
		As the Washington Post writes yesterday, he was relishing the attention at the nation's, one of the nation's most watched TV events.
		That trip into the Daytona 500, they note, just a quick trip up the coast from Mar-a-Lago.
		He shook hands with drivers before NASCAR's signature race.
		He reveled in the applause as fighter jets screamed overhead and some attendees were chanting his name.
		Quote, this is your favorite president, Donald Trump told the drivers by radio as the presidential limousine, The Beast, circled the track.
		He said, I'm a big fan.
		I'm a really big fan of you people.
		There's the beast circling the track with President Trump at the Daytona 500.
		This morning, we are asking you on this President's Day, who's your favorite president and why?
		That's our question for this first half hour of the Washington Journal today, a three-hour program on this president's day.
		We hope you join us for all of it.
		And we'll start in California with Perry, line for Republicans.
		Perry, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, John.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Who's your favorite president, Perry?
unidentified		Teddy Roosevelt.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Why Teddy Roosevelt?
unidentified		Well, just such a historical figure.
		One of the interesting things about Teddy Roosevelt was him and his brother Elliot actually watched the funeral procession of Abraham Lincoln from the second-story floor of the house they lived in in New York when the procession went down.
		I believe it's 57th Avenue.
		I always thought that was kind of a historical thing that a president should actually see another president as famous as Abraham Lincoln in a very sad way, but it was kind of like a destiny for him to become president.
		And just so much history with him.
		Even after he left office, he was big as life.
		Everywhere he went, he was just somebody who was a true world leader in the White House and out of the White House.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What do you think history will say about his, or is saying at this point, it's been long enough for history to have its thoughts, about his attempt to return to the White House, the leader of the Bull Moose Party?
unidentified		Oh, yes, that was something else.
		And of course, we know that he almost was assassinated with his return.
		And there was another little funny story about how, like, after his presidency, he actually had to go to court.
		And over, I forget what it was over, but when he was told that he couldn't stand up and speak because he was such a powerful orator.
		And actually, FDR actually, I believe he was in the assembly, actually was a witness.
		And he said, how do you know this man?
		He says, I think it was by blood and by relationship or something.
		It's kind of funny what FDR said, too, because he was actually called to testify for his cousin.
		Well, Perry.
		That was interesting.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Hey, Teddy Roosevelt fan.
		You mentioned FDR and Teddy Roosevelt both making the top five in the historians survey of presidents.
		This survey, the most recent one done by presidential historians and coordinated by C-SPAN, helped put that together and have done it over the years four different times.
		The most recent one in 2021, the top five in that historian survey, Abraham Lincoln, then George Washington, Franklin Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower.
		That's what more than 100 presidential historians said was their pick for the presidents on a variety of presidential leadership criteria.
		We want to hear from you this morning.
		Who's your favorite president and why?
		This is Linda, also in California, Independent.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Hi, yes.
		My favorite president, and I don't see how it could ever be another, is Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
		And that's because of his vision for America.
		He was of Brahmin's heritage from back east, but he felt America needed to be a place without great differences in income, in money.
		There should not be a tremendously wealthy class and many, many, many poor workers living in fear for their families' future.
		He supported unions.
		He supported peace.
		He was intelligent.
		This was this, he was just what I think.
		He envisioned America the way my folks envisioned America and the way I was raised.
		Actually, I was raised a Roosevelt Democrat thoughtless.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Linda, you say he supported peace, and yet one of the best known things about him was his leadership of the United States during World War II.
unidentified		Yes, it's ironic, but that's his intelligence.
		And it has spread to thinking.
		Yes, I agree.
		I'm glad you added that to it.
		Yes.
		And even as he deliberately set it up, I still liked, I loved his economic view.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Linda, thanks for the call from California to Massachusetts.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Mike, Line for Democrats, who's your favorite president and why?
unidentified		My all-time favorite was Franklin D. Roosevelt.
		And there were three things.
		One was his big, great support for Social Security, and I believe it was in the mid or late 30s.
		Then the WPA, which helped millions of people get back to work when there was no hope during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
		And his greatest accomplishment was taking us from the Great Depression.
		By 1945, we were the world's number one economic and technological giant.
		And that's my feelings about Franklin D. Roosevelt.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Mike, thanks for the call from Massachusetts.
		Jack in Ohio, Columbus.
		Good morning.
		You're next.
unidentified		Hello, can you hear me?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		I can, Jack.
		Who's your favorite president?
		All right.
		Domino is next in California.
		Republican, good morning.
unidentified		Hello, good morning.
unidentified		First of all, I have to say that I, as an Italian American, my favorite president has to have been George W. Bush because he showed the American people that when you're president, he's getting a little bit boring.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		We'll go to Herbert in Georgia.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Democrat, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, John.
unidentified		My favorite president is London Johnson.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Why LBJ?
unidentified		Because he signed the civil rights bill, and we see, and that caused one of the presidents of Obama, which is another favorite, to become a biracial president in the United States of America.
		And by him signing that civil rights bill, it was very beautiful because this was America foundation of three generations with him, the European, the Indian, and the black American, the first generation.
		And I think that we should have a part of American history.
		You know, and I appreciate London Johnson for doing that because, you know, he went against his own people, went against his own Democrats.
		Whereas now, you've got these Republicans who don't even want to go against their own president for democracy.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Herbert, I wonder what your thoughts are of this recent Gallup poll about a survey of Americans, about their feelings about living U.S. presidents.
		And among those, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, Barack Obama, with the highest favorability rating, 59% of Americans responding to the Gallup poll saying they have a favorable opinion of Barack Obama, just 36% saying they have an unfavorable view.
		That is a stark difference from Americans' views of Joe Biden, just 39% saying they have a favorable view, 57% saying they have an unfavorable view.
unidentified		Well, you know, John, to be honest with you, see, they look at the doctors of Obama.
		But Obama was racial.
		He was divided.
		He was white and black.
		He was racial.
		And that said, that said.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		I'm listening, Herbert.
unidentified		Well, John, I like Obama because, yeah.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And Herbert, you got to stop listening through your phone and just listening from your TV and just speak through your phone.
		Easiest way to have a conversation here.
		By the way, more discussion about Barack Obama.
		He plays a major role in the book by Juan Williams of Fox News, his new book out just last month, New Prize for These Eyes, the Rise of America's Second Civil Rights Movement.
		We're going to be having that conversation in the last hour of the Washington Journal today.
		So stick around for that discussion and your calls with Juan Williams.
		Back to your calls this morning about your favorite president and why.
		This is John West Palm Beach, Florida, Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, John.
		My favorite president is Andrew Jackson because he ended the Fed and there were no debts.
		The United States had no debts, no $34 trillion in debt under Andrew Jackson.
		He paid off all our debts, sold all the assets, and closed down the Fed.
		That's why I love him.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And John, what do you think presidents have said about the national debt and their views in the national debt since then?
		It's more than $34 trillion.
		It's about $36.5 trillion and counting today, at least if you go by usdeblock.com.
unidentified		I don't know how to answer that.
		I don't think they even care.
		The Fed is the president's bank account.
		And Closing if we had to pay off that $34 trillion by selling our assets, listen to this.
		We have 800 million acres of federally owned land.
		If we had to sell every acre, it would cost $50,000 per acre to sell up to pay off the debt.
		And that's pretty big.
		I think you get $10,000 an acre top.
		I don't know.
		I don't know.
		That's just a little calculation I like to make.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And here's another way to look at it, John.
		And this again from U.S. Debt Clock.
		The debts per U.S. citizen, $107,000 each U.S. citizen would have to pay to pay off the national debt if you went by just per taxpayer in this country, $323,000 per taxpayer to pay off the national debt.
		Jack is in Athens, Texas, Republican.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead, sir.
unidentified		My favorite president, I'm a Republican, but it might seem a little bit strange.
		But my favorite probably would be Bill Clinton.
		He was a pretty smart guy.
		He got a lot of stuff done.
		He let Congress get a lot of stuff done.
		He did welfare reform.
		Bill was really neat stuff.
		And of course, he took credit for it.
		Plus, just for entertainment value alone, Clinton was a great guy.
		Thank you.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Jack, what do you think about Bill Clinton since he's left office?
unidentified		Not really much, nothing.
		You know, I think that they'd make a lot of money.
		But I think he was just a smart guy, a really slick politician.
		Nick Gingrich did a whole bunch of stuff while he was in office, and the Congress did.
		And, of course, he took credit for it.
		Pretty smart stuff.
		Anyway, that's all I got.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Jack in Texas.
		If you want to learn more about Bill Clinton after leaving office, he wrote a book about it.
		And we aired it this weekend.
		His discussion about that book on C-SPAN's book TV.
		You can find that conversation.
		It was just a few years ago that he sat down for that interview.
		C-SPAN.org, if you type Bill Clinton into the search bar at the top of the page, you can find Bill Clinton and other presidents talking about their books, about their memoirs.
		This is Bill in New York, Democrat.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Thanks for taking my call.
		Yeah, I think I was going to go with Abraham William, but we know that they would have had to free the slaves anyway because of them acting up, I guess you could say, just to be fun about it.
		But I would think that it would be a toss between Robert Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
		John Black, John Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson.
		John Kennedy wasn't able to accomplish much that he would have, but Lyndon B. seemed to held it up for him, right?
		Even though that we know that he used the N-words a couple of times, it's been said.
		And that, you know, but what he did, he signed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act.
		He declared war on poverty.
		He had done so many things for the poor.
		And he also thought about the environment.
		And also, he signed Medicare.
		So, yeah, Lyndon B, even though he was a little racist.
		I think he did a lot of great things.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Bill in New York.
		This is one of the headlines from the Washington Times today.
		Keeping the president in President's Day, the holiday becomes increasingly focused on retail instead of George Washington.
		It is a focus on the history of President's Day.
		And we're asking you this morning on this President's Day, who's your favorite president and why?
		This is Rod in Michigan, Republican.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Yeah, my favorite president is Nixon.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Why, Nixon, Rod?
unidentified		Reason is, back with then I was going to college of Michigan State and the state paper come out and my birthday was on the front page and I says, what's that there for?
		I was number two in the draft and then Nixon called it off.
		So I'm still alive.
		I'm happy.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's Rod in Michigan.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Rod, did you know many people who ended up going to Vietnam?
unidentified		Oh, many.
		One of our best people in my hometown died over there.
		I just, I voted for McGovern.
		But Nixon saved my life, so that's why he's my president.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's Rod in Michigan.
		Shirley is in Del Ray Beach, Florida.
		Democrat, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		I'm going to say President Barack Obama because he was, of course, the first African-American president that this country ever had.
		He's the first.
		He was transformative.
		I want to say everybody voted for him.
		Of course they didn't, but everybody voted for him.
		It showed the world that the country could go forward.
		And once the present president is no longer here, we will have to go back to rebuilding our country.
		But he moved us forward.
		Then we had to go backwards, as life seems to make us do as a country.
		We move forward five steps, we go back ten.
		And that's my choice.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Shirley in Florida.
		This is Bernard in Illinois, Independent.
		Good morning.
		Who's your favorite president, Bernard?
unidentified		Mr. President Lincoln and Mr. Kennedy.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And why is that?
unidentified		Because they were both good men.
martin caidin ▲ ● ▼		And I believe they really knew strayed this country out.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What makes a president a good man, a good president?
unidentified		A gentleman and he freed the slave, Mr. Lincoln did.
unidentified		And Mr. Kennedy stood his ground.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Where did he stand his ground, Bernard?
unidentified		What particular was the Keyword missile crisis?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Bernard in Illinois.
		Also been looking for your social media posts as well.
		Here's a few of those who are watching and writing along on social media.
		Kelly on Facebook saying it's Donald Trump, best president since Reagan, peace through strength, and already, not already bought like most politicians.
		They hate him because they can't control him.
		They never wanted the waste, fraud, abuse, and money laundering exposed.
		Another quote from Jim on Facebook saying it's Coolidge for his quote when he said his greatest accomplishment was minding his own business.
		The exact quote, according to the Coolidge Foundation, perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding the minding of my own business.
		March 1st, 1929 is when Coolidge said that.
		James Antle saying it is Teddy Roosevelt, war hero, made food and drugs safe for people to consume, protected nature by establishing the National Parks, attack trust during the Gilded Age, the last president to skinny dip in the Potomac, and he drank a gallon of coffee a day.
		This is Joe saying it's Grover, Cleveland just for his name.
		And Mrs. Dutton saying Ulysses S. Grant and Bill Clinton looking for your Facebook posts, your social media ex posts as well.
		And of course, your calls.
		This is Bill in Pennsylvania, Republican.
		Who's your favorite president?
		Why?
unidentified		Donald Trump.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And why Trump, Bill?
unidentified		Trump's a businessman.
		He's not a politician in the traditional way.
		And people were tired of how things were going for years and with all the politicians.
		And we dug ourselves into a big hole and Trump's trying to get us out of it.
		He's a businessman first.
		I just believe he's going to end up being the greatest president of all time.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Bill, I'm not sure you saw, but it was recently that Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, member of the House, a Republican, introducing legislation to arrange for the carving of President Trump's image in Mount Rushmore.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What do you think about that?
unidentified		That's a bit premature.
		Time will tell, but I think she's jumping the gun a little bit on that.
		As Nancy Pelosi wanted to put Biden's head on Mount Rushmore.
		You know, that was very premature as we saw how history ended up playing out.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Bill in Pennsylvania.
		This is Carol in Iowa.
		Democrat, good morning.
		Who's your favorite president and why?
unidentified		Well, actually, I have three presidents.
		Franklin Roosevelt, because he got his Social Security, and I'm as old as that.
		Ben Barack Obama.
		I still remember the crowd watching him at his inauguration speech.
errol darts in unknown ▲ ● ▼		The tears on the faces of the black people.
unidentified		And I felt their happiness because it was long overdue.
		And third, I'm going to say Joe Biden.
		I miss him.
		The history is going to show how much he did for us in the four years he brought us through the COVID.
		He made so many executive orders that Trump had in and just throw out the window.
		And we're going to have to recover from that.
		And it's going to take us four years.
		It's going to take us four years for another Democrat to come in and fix all that.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Carol in Iowa.
		Just a reminder to turn down your television when you're getting ready to speak through the phone.
		Makes it easier.
		This is Ricky in North Carolina.
		Democrat, good morning.
		Who's your favorite president and why?
unidentified		Yes.
		My favorite president is John F. Kennedy.
		My name is Ricky Mason from North Carolina.
		And I believe John F. Kennedy was the best president that this country ever had.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And why, Ricky?
unidentified		Because John F. Kennedy, at the time that he was president, and as far as I can remember in the 60s, he stood for the country and the people, and he cared for the citizens of the United States, where there was a lot of programs that was not implemented in the government.
		And the government, to me, at that time, was on one accord, the Republicans and the Democrats, to come together and to make programs that was feasible to help less fortunate Here in America, like social service, I mean, social services and social security.
		And he put all those programs and those things in healthcare and for children and all this stuff.
		That now that we're Donald Trump and the Mars man is in there and is trying to disintegrate all these programs that was to help us here in America, and not only America, but others that we've concerned this country with foreign people, helping them with AIDS of health care and food and stuff like that when crisis appeared,
		even when Martin Luther King was protesting for the civil rights movement.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And Ricky, you mentioned all these different programs.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And Jonathan, known for one of his most famous comments from his inaugural address, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
unidentified		Right, exactly right, exactly right.
		And therefore, and I like that quote, and you're right that you remind me of that, because he did ask that question, and therefore it was not what the country could do for you, but what you could do for the country.
		So, therefore, that means that the government and the people was willing to pull together for what the government could do for the country, then what the people could do for the government to help those programs, help those situations much better for all humans or all mankind.
		I will put it in that way.
		And I just say John F. Kennedy was one of my greatest presidents that put all these accolades of good things in place for mankind in our country.
		And for those that, even when Castro wanted to disseminate those Cubans and stuff like that, John F. Kennedy had those people exported here to the United States to help that situation out.
		It was just so much that I believe if he was to live out his terms of life or what have you, then he'd even done greater more stuff that we can not even, I guess, not even think of stuff that was needed here in this country.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		It's Ricky in North Carolina.
		A few more of your social media comments.
		This is Andrew saying President Obama is my favorite because he saved America from the 2008 financial crisis, expanded health care to tens of millions of people, and streamlined assistance to small business.
		And this is John on Facebook.
		It's FDR, a man of personal wealth and certainly not a perfect human being.
		He did more to help the economy and the American working class people than any other president.
		Darrell, North Carolina Independent, good morning.
		Who's your favorite president and why?
unidentified		Good morning.
		My favorite president is Abraham Lincoln.
		As a descendant from African slaves with the condition of the human heart, it could be highly likely that I wouldn't be free today.
		But then I would also like to add my second favorite president is Donald J. Trump.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And why is Trump your second favorite, Darrell?
unidentified		Well, because of what he wants to do for this country.
unidentified		I think he is, his tactics may be seen as divisive, but I think his heart is that he wants to return America or get America into a much better place for all Americans.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Darrell in North Carolina, our last caller in this first segment of the Washington Journal.
		Stick around, though.
		Plenty more to talk about on this president's day, including up next, we'll be joined by presidential historian Alexis Koe.
		We'll talk about her effort to cross the country and ask Americans about their feelings about presidents and how a president should be.
		And later, Fox News senior political analyst Juan Williams discusses his new book, New Prize for These Eyes, The Rise of America's Second Civil Rights Movement.
		Stick around.
		We'll be right back.
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george h w bush ▲ ● ▼		Democracy belongs to us all.
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george w bush ▲ ● ▼		Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies.
barack obama ▲ ● ▼		American democracy is bigger than any one person.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected.
unidentified		We are still at our core a democracy.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom.
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john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Well, C-SPAN's book TV and American History TV viewers are familiar with Alexis Koh.
		She's a presidential historian, author, sub-stacker, senior fellow at New America.
		And Alexis Koh, we've began our program today asking viewers who their favorite president is and why.
		Is a presidential historian allowed to have a favorite president?
unidentified		I don't have a favorite president.
		That's one of the first questions people always ask me, and it's professional.
		But so I try not to pick favorites, but you have to understand that I see them on their best days and their worst days.
		I read all their personal letters and diaries.
		So it's hard to feel that way, but I do feel about them the way people will feel about sort of distant family members who are a little bit difficult, but you love them anyway.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And you've written about them as well, have written one book about George Washington, writing another book about JFK.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What drew you specifically to George Washington and now JFK?
unidentified		I love presidents who have been so mythologized that it's really hard to get a sense of who they really were and what they really did.
		And I feel like it's a puzzle that I want to put together to solve to the best of my ability.
		And what I usually find very early on in the process is that many of the things that we take to be axiomatic about the president are in fact not at all.
		And that's where it gets really fun.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		On myths about America's first president, this being George Washington's birthday, the official designation for the federal holiday.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What are some of the myths out there about America's first president?
unidentified		We heard one recently at the inauguration when a prayer was given.
		There was a preface, and the preface included one of the greatest myths, which was that Washington kneeled to pray at Valley Forge.
		There's a painting that was painted decades later, but even without any sort of corroborating evidence, there's no one who said that he prayed.
		There's no eyewitnesses.
		He didn't say it.
		It doesn't seem likely because he was a deist, meaning that he didn't believe that God would interact with people on earth.
		So it's definitely not what he would do.
		So that's one that comes up a lot.
		And of course, that he couldn't tell a lie.
		And he was a spy master, so he could definitely lie and he liked it a lot.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Alexis Coe's book about George Washington, You Never Forget Your First, A Biography of George Washington came out in 2020 in the process of writing another book about JFK.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Do you have a title for that book yet?
unidentified		Young Jack, 1917 to 1957.
		So I start, I stop right before the presidency.
		It's right after he wins the Pulitzer.
		He has a child and he's very much primed for it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And why stop before his presidency?
unidentified		Because there's a state of books, I feel like, every month about Kennedy's presidency.
		And I really believe that so many of them are excellent.
		However, his early years and particularly his time in Congress, which was the training ground that the founding fathers had wanted presidents to go through, has been treated a little bit like a flyover estate.
		It goes very quickly.
		People rush through it.
		It's more like this happened, these are plot points.
		And then we get to the presidency.
		And one of my goals as a presidential historian, one of the things that I really push back on is this idea of destiny, because as we all know, as we live our lives, nothing is a foregone conclusion.
		It's a series of efforts and decisions along the way that really make a difference.
		And so I just wanted to slow down and focus.
		And it's been great fun.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Along with your work as an author, you're a senior fellow with New America.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What's New America?
unidentified		New America is a bipartisan think tank located in Washington, D.C., and has offices throughout the nation.
		And it's a really wonderful and encouraging environment in which my fellowship project, which has been going on now for a couple of years, asked the question, how should a president be?
		And in 2024, New America, aided somewhat by some of the stops that I went to, sent me on a discussion tour across the country.
		13 stops.
		A few were virtual because I really wanted to meet people in different places.
		I give talks all the time at universities and historical societies and libraries, but not everyone goes to those talks.
		And so I talked to, for example, Jamal Bowie on TikTok because he sort of owns that platform and it's a fantastic way to interact with a very different subset of people.
		But at the same time, I also went to the Ohio State University and spoke at their National Security Institute.
		And so it was really a wide range of venues in which I got an amazing overview of how the country feels.
		And of course, I wasn't just doing this because it was an election year.
		We are about to turn 250 in 2026.
		That is America's 250th.
		And that's a really important moment in which New America, as part of this fellowship, has three goals that we think about.
		We want to feel pride in the founding, a reckoning for the ways we've fallen short, and aspiration towards a better future.
		And so I was trying to reconcile all those things.
		All 250 years plus what comes next.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And we want to give you a sense of how America feels this morning.
		And we do that with our phone lines.
		They're open to talk to Alexis Coe this morning, presidential historian, and this effort with New America, this question, how should a president be.
		Here's the numbers for you to call.
		It's 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats.
		Independents, 202748-8002.
		And Alexis Coe, maybe some guidance on that question.
		When you say, how should a president be, do you mean as a leader, as a person, as a father or husband?
		What do you mean?
unidentified		All of the above, each tour had a specific focus.
		At the New York Historical Society, one of my guests was Dr. Kevin Young, who runs the Museum of African American History, one of the Smithsonians in Washington, D.C.
		And we talked about historical reckoning.
		Obviously, we talked about national security at the Ohio State University.
		And I think one of the really interesting points was I would open the question up to the people I was talking to and also to the audience and ask them about attributes, but also in specific situations.
		So how much preparation does a president need?
		Should they go through Congress?
		Do we want outsiders?
		What are actual traits?
		Like empathy was really interesting.
		And authenticity emerged as one of the major attributes that people really liked.
		But it's not quite what we think it should be.
		And there's a little bit of a disconnect between what we think we want in leaders and who we actually get as leaders.
		And so that's where the fun comes in because complexity is not a liability.
		It's just more to figure out.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		When you say authenticity, what was an example that would be cited to you as an authentic president?
unidentified		Well, I started the tour in January of 2024, and this came up quite a bit, which was that, you know, one of the things I will back up and say that the reason I wanted to do this project is not just our 250th.
		As a presidential historian, I am sometimes treated like a comment box for the presidency.
		And I was experiencing so much cynicism, unprecedented cynicism after Donald Trump from 2016, but during his presidency after, but also during Biden.
		And that was really interesting to me.
		And so authenticity to them, for example, was empathy was talked about as an attribute that they wanted.
		And Biden, of course, was well known for empathy, but not at that point.
		There was the belief that he was not empathetic because Gaza was mentioned often.
		And then a couple of times on the tour, which I thought was really interesting, is that while we see Biden surrounded by family, and of course, we know he had a really close relationship with both of his sons, and he's never met one of his granddaughters.
		And so that was something that people would mention.
		And so there is this authenticity that you show up in every way and that you're not empathetic just to a certain group of people.
		Consistency is really important, as well as not just campaigning as an authentic person, but actually maintaining ties with the electorate after the campaign is over.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Do you think we're more cynical in general, or are you finding we're more cynical about our leaders, about our presidents these days?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What do you mean when you say the cynicism that you found?
unidentified		I have often experienced a lot of questions about the presidency and the kind of person who would want to be president.
		But I think that there has been a sharper edge of late as I have progressed in my career.
		It's certainly different.
		And in the last four to eight years, it sometimes feels confrontational and less about learning and more about learning and seeking understanding and having really fruitful conversations and more about making points or snapbacks or nothing that really moves the conversation forward.
		And so it does seem as if people have grown tired of the same old conversations about the presidency, but they have to also be willing to have more.
		And so that's a challenge that I feel like I face.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Let me let you chat with some callers, have some already for you.
		Alexis Coe, presidential historian, joining us on this president's day.
		Dwayne is up first, an independent out of Illinois.
		Dwayne, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Good morning.
		I thought I'd throw Harry Truman into the conversation today and try to inject a little humor into the conversation.
		I recall touring the Truman's home in Independence, Missouri.
		And for us baby boomers, it would remind you of just going to visit your grandparents' house when you were a kid.
		They were just ordinary people.
		But there were extraordinary things in their house.
		And one of them was Bess Truman's official White House portrait.
		And in light of Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump taking things that they shouldn't have taken from the White House, I thought it was humorous that Bess took her official White House portrait and when she was asked to return it, told them to go pound sand.
		She was going to keep it with all she had to put up with.
		She thought she deserved it.
		And so to this day, her official White House portrait, which belongs to the White House, is in their home in their home in Independence.
		I thought that was kind of humorous and reminded me just what real people the Trumans were.
		And I guess I could call him my favorite president.
		Thanks for listening.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Duane, thanks for the call.
		Real people authenticity.
		Alexis Coe, what do you take from that?
unidentified		I thought that was a great suggestion about how to spend President's Day.
		It's this really ill-defined holiday.
		And a couple of years ago, I wrote an op-ed for the New York Times, and the headline was something like, George Washington would hate President's Day because there's nothing really, it's not like 4th of July, at least you have some sort of community gathering.
		I love going to presidential homes and libraries and museums because you get the intersection of the personal and the professional.
		We have to remember, I used to host a podcast for Audible called Presidents Are People Too, and they are at the end of the day, people with their own proclivities.
		Now, I think there's a pretty big difference between taking a portrait and taking sensitive materials that could put the country at risk and also could deny people like me the ability to understand the presidency in retrospect.
		And this is a problem throughout not only the president's, the executive branch, but also Congress.
		They love to declare their own papers personal.
		And so I think that it's a really interesting conversation.
		But I do think that we view these places, these establishments like presidential libraries and museums as a celebration or place of reverence.
		And when I, when you, and some of them very much are, but a lot of them challenge and embrace some of the darker aspects of the president's life and decisions and try to contextualize that.
		And I'm thinking of one shining example is Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home, and also my neighbor, which is FDR's Hyde Park.
		I go there about once a week and just love it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		On presidential places, an interesting discussion in the Associated Press story today about President's Day.
		You're quoted in that discussion, focusing on the monuments here in Washington, D.C., and what they tell us about the presidents Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington's, the Washington Monument.
		Explain what your concern was about how we relate to George Washington and the Washington Monument.
unidentified		That is not my favorite monument.
		I feel like Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, they have far superior ones because they have features, they have words, and Washington is this unifying figure, but he's just an obelisk.
		He's really tall, but it's sanded and you don't really see any part of him.
		You don't interact with it at all.
		And I think that's a real missed opportunity.
		I am, you know, we have talked a lot about monuments over the last, I would say, decade, but I ascribe to Frederick Douglass's idea that monuments should exist in their original form, but you can improve upon them.
		And so when I look at Washington's monument, I think there's so much room for conversations about different parts of his life.
		The title he had the longest in his life was master.
		At 11, he inherited 10 slaves, enslaved people when his father died.
		And so that's something that we have to talk about because at the end of his life, that number swelled into, it was over 213.
		That's really significant because he couldn't have become who he was without them.
		And when we call someone like Washington or Jefferson a man of his time, we have to remember all those people were as well.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		On monuments and memorials, I think the newest one in Washington, D.C. is the Dwight Eisenhower Memorial just off of the National Mall.
		Have you visited that one?
		What are your thoughts on that newest memorial?
		We're showing a picture of it to viewers now.
unidentified		I have not visited it, which is a tragedy to me.
		Unfortunately, when I'm always in D.C., I'm hitting the archives and I am giving talks.
		But I think that any addition is a wonderful starting place for a conversation.
		And so I'm excited about it.
		But I do also want to caution people when we put importance, when we emphasize these monuments and the names on the sides of buildings and schools.
		I always tell people when they worry about Washington being canceled, best of luck.
		I don't know how you do that.
		He is, if you cancel George Washington, you're canceling America.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Let me head to Montana.
		This is Greg waiting on our line for Democrats.
		Greg, good morning.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
unidentified		Can you hear me okay there?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		Okay, my copper, my copper, my service dog, wakes me up for this in this first time caller.
		And I just started the program.
		My question is, how do you feel about the last two presidents?
		Roughly, you know, how do they compare or rank, if you would, with respect to empathy, which I feel is real important.
		An example would be just empathy toward the poor versus the rich or just caring toward the common person, animals in particular, say, or just the common person.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Alexis Coe.
unidentified		That is a really interesting question.
		Animals are a significant part of the story you will get at one of the presidential libraries and museums that we just talked about because they're something that charms the nation, FALA for FDR.
		Washington had many dogs and he gave them interesting names.
		One was named Sweet Lips.
		I think that the way that a human interacts in general with an animal is really telling about their person.
		As far as empathy, I would say that early days of COVID are hard to get out of my mind.
		Donald Trump was very focused on his own experience as president.
		And the thing is, every president enters office with an agenda.
		Not all of them face a pandemic, but they have faced terrorist attacks and many other challenging issues.
		And their presidency is buffeted by these events that are outside of their control.
		It's not necessarily the resume they have leading up or the attributes that they have.
		It's how they react in the moment and their ability to grow.
		The story with every president that people love to tell that I often doubt is that they have some sort of evolution.
		Think that that is rare.
		Someone like Kennedy, and one of the reasons I wanted to write about him is I really feel like he did have an evolution, and his empathy grew as he experienced the world.
		So it's really about where you start out.
		I'm not sure if it's as much about empathy as having an insatiable curiosity about people and a diverse set of people.
		And the presidency is so tied to power, and obviously that's important.
		But many of the people who the president serves do not have that kind of power or capital.
		And so there has to be an innate interest in them and their lived experience.
		So I wouldn't rate either, you know, 10 out of 10.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		On the animals side of what the viewer was talking about, is it true that it was Harry Truman who said, if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog?
unidentified		Yes.
		Yes.
		This is very true.
		Yes.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Why are we so obsessed with presidents' pets?
unidentified		I think that presidents for us, we didn't want a monarchy, but we certainly are very interested in monarchies.
		I'm always fascinated by the reaction to a royal wedding, and Americans will get up early.
		The thing is, we evicted a monarch.
		We didn't want one, but we do love a great story.
		And so we like to know things about our presidents in a really easy way to perhaps feel okay with them on a personal level, even if you disagree with everything that they're doing, as one of the callers said.
		You know, they don't exactly like the medium, but they feel like the message is good.
		It's to see them with a dog.
		And when you don't see, or a small child, for example, Barack Obama was always so charming and seemed so innately good when he would interact with children.
		And that is something that makes them, again, human.
		So presidents are people too.
		And that is really lovely for people to see.
		Otherwise, they're always in suits and they're in front of a firing squad of media.
		It's an intense moment.
		So we don't really see them relax in this way.
		That's candid.
		It's not a photo aw.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Take you to the Hawkeye State.
		This is George in Clear Lake, Iowa, Republican.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Yes.
		I'd like to speak with the guest as a reassessment of, for example, Herbert Hoover's as a president and also kind of his parallel with Jimmy Carter, because both were despised in their presidencies, but both were great men in terms of their humanitarian work.
		Hoover, particularly before he became president, in fact, he wasn't even a politician at that point, other than the fact that he was the vice president.
		And of course, Jimmy Carter with his humanitarian work after his presidency and Hoover also.
		But I'm particularly interested because I just recently visited the Hoover Library in West Branch this past January before it was closing for its renovation for the next year and a half.
		And the thing about it was it was right after Jimmy Carter had passed away.
		So I'm interested in hearing about her particular parallels there.
		And also the fact that, you know, everybody's talked about Roosevelt and the way he got us out of the Depression and that kind of thing.
		But the interesting thing about that is that he, the things that got us out of the depression after his initial work were things that Hoover tried but was not able to do while he was president.
		Anyhow, I'll just stop and quit talking and babbling at this point and let her talk.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Alexis Coe.
unidentified		That was a really good question.
		Don't think you were babbling.
		I think that these all these things are connected.
		I went to go see Carter speak in Plains, Georgia, I think around 2015, 2016.
		I remember I was selling my Washington book that weekend.
		And it was incredible to see him give a sermon and to grapple.
		His grandson had just passed away.
		And he said, you know, I'm angry with God.
		And he talked about that.
		I think what both of those men have in common that maybe didn't make for the best presidency, and this is true with Grover Cleveland, our other non-consecutive president, is that they were completely inflexible.
		They were stubborn.
		And sometimes that can be a good thing and sometimes that can be a bad thing.
		With Carter, it was a very good thing outside of Washington because he's obstinate about certain.
		And I think that he did, you know, within the presidency, for all the many reasons, he's not ranked as one of the top 10 presidents.
		I think that his adherence to a sort of moral standard really changed the way the United States interacts with different countries.
		That's changing now, but I think it really set the tone for decades of international outreach and relations.
		But with Carter, he was very stubborn and he was a micromanager.
		I always, when I think of Carter, I always like to explain this as he managed the White House tennis signup, like for the courts, the sign-up for staff.
		Why would a president do that?
		That's not something he should be doing.
		But he had these obsessions.
		Now, later, when he had this incredible career after the presidency, in which he eradicated guinea worms, he oversaw free and fair elections throughout the world.
		He was sent by many presidents to negotiate and listen to other leaders on behalf of the United States.
		I think that that was a really important attribute.
		It just doesn't always make for the best president.
		And I think Carter will be someone who we think about differently in the decades after his death.
		And that's true for every president.
		They go through a process and evolution after their death as far as public opinion.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Jimmy Carter, also known for his writing career, wrote more than 30 books over the course of his lifetime.
		I know you said you can't have a favorite president, Alexis Coe.
		Do you have a favorite presidential book?
unidentified		Oh, well, I mean, now I've read Profiles and Courage so many times.
		I don't know if it's my favorite.
		I very much, you know, Carter rivals Teddy Roosevelt in terms of his prolific output of books.
		I don't think that I could write these researched, annotated, you know, cited books that fast at all.
		But I respect it.
		And I think that this is a moment in which we have to celebrate political courage, which is essentially what political, what Profiles and Courage is about.
		And the political courage that Carter exemplified in every book is amazing.
		So we've been talking a little bit.
		Gaza's come up a little bit.
		He wrote a book called Peace Not Apartheid.
		A documentary followed him during that book tour.
		And that was a really challenging book tour.
		That was a long time ago.
		People still have a hard time even bringing up the subject.
		And so if you think about a former president going out with a book with that title, it's provocative, it's meant to, and he was ready to fight that fight.
		And I think about that a lot.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Profiles and Courage, I believe, published before JFK was president, correct?
unidentified		Yes, that's where I leave off in my book.
		It was published in 1956, and then he wins the Pulitzer in 1957.
		And that has always been a subject of debate.
		And I'm so excited to say that I figured out how he won it.
		I figured out the decision at the jury and at the executive level.
		And I think I substantiate that he did write it, but there were other things that went wrong.
		It's an incredible feat.
		He really wanted to write a second book.
		His thesis was turned into a book.
		So imagine a fresh Harvard graduate, the son of an ambassador to the Court of St. James, but who had been a total disaster in that role in the lead up to World War II, who then publishes a book, it becomes a bestseller.
		that we're talking about Kennedy.
		Then he goes to war.
		He gets a purple heart.
		He goes into Congress.
		It's an incredible story, but he wanted to win a Pulitzer.
		He wanted to be a writer.
		He was a man of letters.
		He loved literature.
		And so this book was all his hopes and dreams in a lot of ways, and also not.
		I would say that the writing is inferior to his first book because he was recovering from back surgery.
		He was on a lot of painkillers, and it's not the most organized.
		His research also was a little bit outsourced, but he did write it.
		He recited a lot of it, but he wrote it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		And your book on JFK, when is that coming out?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		If people want more on that story.
unidentified		Next year, just around this time.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Meanwhile, with us this morning for about another 20 minutes on the Washington Journal, Alexis Coe taking your calls.
		This is Sally in Bluemont, Virginia, Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		I just wanted to tell a little story about John F. Kennedy.
		When I was in fifth grade, I went on a trip to Hyannisport with my fifth grade friend, and we were sitting out on the dock, and John F. Kennedy and his mother came out to go out to their sailboat.
		And he was not yet president.
		He was a senator, and he was the most gracious, nice person, came up to us and sat down on the dock with us and talked for about an hour about sailing and Hyannis Port and all the different things that kids would like to do.
		And then he and his mom got on the dock and went off sailing and then waved to us and they saw us again coming off the boat and invited us to a football game that the whole family had in the courtyard in Hyannisport.
		That's my story.
		I've always kept it with deep connection.
		Sally, who won the football game?
		I don't remember, but probably Kathleen.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Sally, thanks for sharing your memories.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Alexis Coe.
unidentified		That's a great story.
		And what I love about that story, too, in presidential history sort of trope is mothers are very much maligned.
		They're either these like thorns in the side of the presidents.
		They have to overcome the obstacle of their mother in order to succeed.
		And that's the story we hear about Washington.
		That was my major contribution to Washington studies that that wasn't true.
		That's the story we hear about Kennedy.
		And I would say that's not quite true either.
		And so I love the story because he's going to sail with his mother.
		And I believe all that happened.
		They were an incredibly gregarious, friendly bunch.
		There were nine children at one point, not at the point where she met JFK.
		At that point, he had lost his beloved sister, Kick, who was his best friend, and his eldest brother.
		He was the second oldest, his eldest brother, Joe Jr.
		They were always playing competitive games, touch football.
		This is well known.
		I really enjoy that story.
		Hyannis Court, of course, is where they would summer.
		They had two homes that they would divide their time between, one on Cape Cod and one in Florida, Palm Beach.
		And so it's nice to hear, it's really nice to hear that story.
		And then he would be interested in talking to two fifth grade girls on his way to the presidency.
		Think the thing about JFK and the thing about a lot of presidents that wouldn't necessarily work for 18th and 19th century presidents is that we now see charisma playing quite a role in a president and how the nation interacts and remembers them.
		And of course, JFK had it in ample supply.
		And that was true from the time he was a young child.
		He was always quite witty.
		His mother would write down things that he said that were very funny.
		He would often ask, you know, after the story of he would listen to stories around Christmas and he would say, okay, I know what happened to Jesus, but what happened to the mule?
		But he would deliver it as a joke.
		So he really knew how to talk to just about anyone.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You talked about this before when we chatted with you for American History TV about your substack, but what is dad history?
unidentified		Dad history is something that I, you know, I put as a placeholder in the introduction to You Never Forget Your First, My Washington biography, and it ended up being a part of the book.
		It is a genre that, I mean, it's usually presidential history.
		People, when I was taking my Washington book out to publishers, I maintained that if presidential history was written in a slightly different manner, if it was interested in not just power and it treated the people around the presidency as more than one-dimensional figures who were there just to propel the story forward of the president, that other people would read it, people of color and women.
		And there was a lot of pushback, but it happened.
		But traditionally, presidential history is considered the realm of men.
		I mean, it literally is.
		And most presidential historians are men.
		I'm the first presidential historian in over 100 years who's a woman to write a book on George Washington, which is hard to wrap your head around because there are so many books every year published on him.
		But it is very much a for us, bias, about us kind of genre.
		And I think that that's unfortunate, but we see on Father's Day all the presidential biographies.
		They come out and they're front and center in all the bookstores and the libraries.
		It's dad history.
		It's the book you know will be a winner with your dad.
		And they're usually around about this thick.
		They're a size matters crowd for sure.
		They really like these heavy tomes and they like the same kind of, I call it a visual coffin on the cover.
		It's usually the same five portraits of Washington, including the Washington, the dollar bill, which is a pretty severe Gilbert Stewart portrait in which his jaw is tight and his lips are quite straight because he's wearing dentures that are particularly uncomfortable.
		And the verbal coffin is the title.
		Obviously, I want a different direction, but it usually says George Washington, a life.
		George Washington, a president, George Washington, a biography.
		There's just not a lot to turn your head if you're not already inclined to read that.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You never forget your first is the title of Alexis Coe's biography of George Washington.
		Came out in 2020.
		She's taking your phone calls this morning.
		This is Meredith in Makato, Minnesota.
		Democrat, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		Can you guys hear me okay?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Yes, go ahead.
unidentified		All righty.
		Good morning, Alexis.
		It's really inspiring as a fellow history person, a fanatic to hear you talk about the president.
		So I just wanted to say thank you for doing this project.
		And I really quickly just wanted to say kind of what I value in a president.
		And I wanted to give a little bit of background.
		So my family has voted very bipartisanly over the past Lord knows how many years.
		My grandparents voted for JFK voted for him in 1960 and then voted for Johnson.
		And then this kind of switch happened where they started voting for Nixon and Reagan.
		And ever since Bill Clinton was first elected, they've been voting mostly blue.
		And What the long history of our voting history has taught me is that I value a president who takes the time to know their constituents to fully understand them, who is inclusive, who shows no bias.
		And that's why in the 2028 election, I will be writing in Chapel Roan for president and for vice president Skibbity Toilet.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Meredith in Minnesota.
		Ken is in Hot Springs, Arkansas.
		Republican, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		Can you hear me okay?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, go ahead, Ken.
unidentified		Good.
		Alexa, this is a question for you on more current and recent presidences.
		My curiosity, and maybe you could explain this to me, is a separation of powers is a thing that I'm questioning.
		And in the past, we were told that Congress, the House, had the power, the purse strings.
		But it's kind of obvious from what Biden had done with the drawdown of the National Armory, he did that and usurped that.
		So I'm kind of wanting you to educate us on where that should really stand, what the structure should be.
		And does Trump really have the power to enforce Musk to do these cuts to bring down the debt, which I totally agree with.
		And I think he should be authorized to do that under the powers of the presidency.
		Could you comment on that, please?
		It's an interesting evolution, the powers.
		And of course, we're all really concerned or excited about it in your case.
		And I think that that is a story that begins with George Washington before he was president at the Constitutional Convention.
		George Washington didn't want to go.
		Martha would not go with him.
		He writes all these letters saying she won't leave the state of Virginia because she hated to travel and she had just been away for eight years for the American Revolution.
		And George Washington, that was his second retirement.
		He had already retired from the Virginia militia.
		Had the British monarchy given land-owning white men like Washington a little bit more slack, we might be a different country.
		He wanted to be at the center of his country's story and he didn't really care which one that was.
		But he's at the Constitutional Convention and there's so much to figure out.
		They have to write a Constitution, the Articles of Confederation, they're not working.
		And so he is sitting there.
		He's pretty silent, but he's presiding on a platform.
		And as everyone is fighting this out, they get to the presidency and they look at him and they think, okay, he gave up power.
		He gave up power after the American Revolution, which allegedly King George said, if he does that, he's the greatest man who ever lived.
		People had given up power, but they had often not, especially in that position.
		And it was an incredible thing.
		And he also was very eager to do it.
		He kept writing to Thomas Jefferson and other members of Congress asking, you know, how do you want me to do this?
		I really want to be home for Christmas.
		And when he gets to the Constitutional Convention, people around him assume no matter, you know, parties have started to form, but no matter what they believe, the role of government, how big, how small it should be, that he will be in charge.
		And this is a man you can trust.
		So why not just leave it to him to figure things out?
		And so it's incredibly vague as far as the powers of the presidency, including term limits.
		Washington set all these precedents.
		And then as time has gone on, when presidents have routinely violated these precedents, many in small ways and some in big ways, like the peaceful transition of power, then there has been usually a response from Congress.
		A lot of times that response has been just in words, but sometimes there have been efforts made.
		And one of them we can see is term limits.
		So after FDR, he died in his fourth term.
		Then Congress passed term limits, and it was based on Washington's decision to leave after two terms.
		And then, as you, again, with FDR, we have this expansion of FDR want to go to war.
		Of course, Congress has to authorize a war, but the president can send troops abroad.
		So there's already that tension.
		And as time has gone on, the presidency has tested those limits and tested those boundaries more and more.
		And it has been a real failure of Congress not to respond in real time when a lot of those challenges have been totally unacceptable.
		And I think that's what we see now.
		But there is the intention of the framers was checks and balances.
		We know that.
		And so I think we will see a lot of these.
		You know, I am not a constitutional scholar, and I'm certainly not an attorney, or I'm not, I'm not, I haven't studied quite as much, but I do know that these are going, they are in the course and they will continue to be in the courts because there is a lot to suggest that someone like Elon Musk, an unelected person who suddenly seems to be co-president, doesn't have quite these powers.
		And we do know that the president doesn't necessarily have a lot of the powers that he is saying he does.
		So we will see.
		We will see how it works out.
		This is definitely the wild west of presidential studies.
		I can't even call it history because it is, there has been nothing like it before.
		We spent so much time saying he's unprecedented.
		This is truly the moment.
		But I have actually a piece coming out today on MSNBC saying that we've been saying he's precedented, but he's also unprecedented, but he's also quite precedented.
		Everything that you can say someone has tried from the transactional presidency to bigotry in the office that has always existed.
		He's just a spectacle about it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		You mentioned you're not a constitutional scholar.
		Ethan in Tennessee wants to know what are the qualifications of a presidential historian?
		How do you become one?
unidentified		I have a graduate degree in history.
		And otherwise, I would say it's just a proclivity.
		I spend a lot of time in the archives and looking at primary sources and interacting with the world of history.
		And a few people have introduced themselves as history enthusiasts and history buffs.
		And I think that these relationships coexist.
		There are certain professional standards that I have to adhere to and that I want to adhere to.
		And I'm recognized in various ways.
		I'm very excited any day now, C-SPAN's presidential rankings will arrive in my mailbox.
		And that's always a really fun, fun time.
		So that is, that's the, those are the qualifications.
		But then many people who we regard as presidential historians don't necessarily have the qualifications.
		So Ron Turneau, for example, I don't think does.
		Many of them don't hold Michael Beschloss, who's considered a great, I think he's great.
		He has an MBA.
		And so I think it takes a certain, like anything like the presidency, it takes personal attributes, certain qualities, and then hopefully a lot of academic rigor because that's what matters.
		There can be different approaches, but everything has to be based on the same sources.
		We have to all be working off the same letter, for example, and quoting it as accurately as possible.
		Once we do that, we can go wild with how we interpret it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Alexis Coe also with a history substack study Mary Kill.
		If you want to learn more about that, she sat down for an interview back in December about it with C-SPAN's American History TV.
		Though, when I was looking at the substack recently, you called Thomas Paine one of America's first influencers.
		Explain.
unidentified		In pamphlet form, yes.
		He was really important to the American Revolution.
		Was able to make things go viral to speak in the parlance of our time.
		He, I think I called that one no pain, no game.
		And it was for his birthday.
		He was, he wrote these galvanizing pamphlets that Washington really very much relied on.
		And this is talk about Washington politics in a nutshell.
		They were the best of friends when Washington really needed him.
		Like we would call it lifeboat friends at this point.
		And then Paine sort of revolution hopped.
		He next went to the French Revolution and America inspired a global reaction, a sort of age of revolutions.
		We had one of the least bloody, which was very much credited to George Washington with the peaceful transition of power.
		But Paine was got in trouble with the French during a time of a lot of unrest.
		And he was in jail, as was the Marquis de Lafayette.
		And he wrote to Washington and asked for help, and Washington couldn't intervene.
		James Monroe was the ambassador and he was working to help him.
		But then Thomas Paine wrote an open letter to Washington on his, he wanted to send it on his birthday.
		And Monroe, who was no fan of Washington's at that point, talked him out of it.
		But Payne basically wrote, you know, one day people will figure out, were you an apostate?
		Were you ever really a decent person, a decent leader?
		Only time will tell.
		And it was really the first, Monroe and Paine wrote the first presidential tell-alls, but they were very important to our country.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Just a short amount of time left with Alexis Co.
		Let me try to get one or two more calls.
		This is Zenobia in Arizona, Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		This is very refreshing this morning.
		I woke up and I saw you L C Span, and I'm so happy to be able to speak for the first time ever.
		And I'm very interested in the type of president that we as a nation here in America should have would be a president like you mentioned previously for humanity, a president that is not self-serving, who looks out for the people that he has sworn to protect and provide.
		And there's an old scripture in the Bible that says, when a wicked king rules, the people mourn.
		But when a righteous king rules, the people rejoice.
		So you fast forward to today, to today, to the present president.
		The people will rejoice when a ruler is righteous in his way of how he treats his people in the nation that he serves.
		So I would like to see more of the humanity and the kindness and integrity be present in these next four years.
		I think the people would rejoice more.
		Of course, the president is not perfect, but at the same time, if the people are at his forethought, then I think the people will reach his place.
		And that is what I wanted to say.
		I'm so happy to be able to do this.
		This is the first for me, but I thank you for this.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Zenobia, you can call in once a month on the Washington Journal.
		Hope to hear from you down the road.
		Alexis Coe.
unidentified		Oh, I think that's a wonderful sentiment.
		I think that a lot of people feel that way.
		And certainly, something that is really important to the country and when a president has been really effective is when they can be a unifier.
		And that's not all the time, right?
		We can't win them all, but you should be able to win quite a bit.
		I like to say that something that was really important.
		We recently had a plane crash that we watched, and we heard from President Trump very, very quickly about it.
		And before he had received too much information about it, he declared who was wrong.
		The families were still discovering who had been a victim on the plane who had died.
		And it reminded me of Ronald Reagan and that his speech after the Challenger crash when throughout the nation, everyone had gotten up early to watch this launch, and school children had experienced for the first time seeing people who they knew the names of blow up in front of them.
		And Peggy Noonan, who's still, she's a writer at the Wall Street Journal, and she was, I think he said, get the girl because he needed a more sensitive writer.
		And she had not really gotten a lot of time as a speechwriter at that point.
		She wrote this incredible speech.
		And there are quotes in it: like, we're used to being dazzled.
		Life is tough.
		This is a part of it, but we have to move on.
		We have to come together.
		And I think that is such an important point that relates to what the caller was saying, that we do want someone who makes us feel okay.
		That's why I also suggest people read presidential history.
		It won't necessarily tell you that, but it will tell you that things were never totally okay.
		And so there is some comfort to be found there.
		But I do think that we need a unifier and someone who can be less divisive.
		At the same time, Donald Trump, as compared to the first election he won, did win the popular vote.
		It was not a landslide, but he won it.
		And so we have to understand and try to reconcile that with our desire for unity.
		And also look at the very large number of people who did not show up.
		And another caller who said that he was going to write in, for example, a very popular singer right now, Chapel Rowan.
		I understand the humor in that, but if you want third parties, really start working for third parties.
		If you want a more humanitarian president, work towards that.
		Citizenship is challenging and it is active.
		And we're not used to that as Americans, but it is going to be necessary if that is the kind of president you want to see in office.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Just over 39 years ago, January 28th, 1986, it was just after 5 p.m. in the Oval Office, Ronald Reagan ending that address to the nation with these words: The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives.
		We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them this morning as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.
		Ronald Reagan.
		Time for one more call.
		This is Mary in Michigan Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, John.
		This is, I'm from snowy northern lower Michigan.
		I wanted to was wondering about, I'm nervous, where does the money come for the presidential libraries?
		Is it all donated?
		And who does the design, the contents, the upkeep, and the security?
		The reason I was wondering because I had read where President Trump received, was it, $20 million from a story that was done by ABC News, but it had to go for his presidential library.
		It couldn't go for anything else.
		And also, I want to mention, I have, you know, my favorite presidents in that.
		And I think the older you get, the more you remember.
		You know, obviously, the more you remember in that.
		But for me, a lot of it was the likability and what their wives and their children did.
		And I remember a lot of their mothers, like Lillian Carter.
		I mean, To me, if a lot of these men, and of course it's been all men, 47 men or whatever, if it wasn't for their wives, wives and their families, they would have never been president.
		And my book club, we're the unofficial Pete Budajudge fan club, and we have a Congress, Senate, and a governorship up in 2026.
		And my 92 and 95-year-old ladies that are in my book, have been in my book club forever, are hoping that Pete Budajudge takes one of those prizes in Steers, Michigan.
		So thank you very much.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		That's Mary in Michigan.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Alexis Coe, I know we're already a little over time, but I'll give you the final couple minutes here.
unidentified		Oh, I think that's first of all, watching Pete go at Mayor Pete, as we still sort of call him sometimes, watching him go on Fox News or I saw someone recently call for him to sort of have an opposition briefing every day, and I thought that is actually brilliant because he's wonderful to watch.
		And he always, I mean, if you look at clips from him when he was in college, he's just a really fast thinker.
		He's articulate and he's incredibly empathetic and he really cares.
		And he is no nonsense.
		Versus we have a lot of politicians who just sort of rail and do seem inauthentic.
		So I understand that very much so.
		I think that there is a lot of opportunity.
		The Speaker of the House, the current Speaker of the House, the reason he's in office is because the first time he ran, he ran unopposed.
		And so I think that it's a wonderful idea to look around.
		The money is always the central issue here.
		AOC has said that she probably will never be president because no one would give her enough money to do so.
		So that is true.
		Presidential libraries, with the exception of Mount Vernon, George Washington's presidential library, they're usually, they have some ties to the government and they get funding from the government.
		And then that allows some oversight.
		And I think that Mount Vernon would have a better presentation of examples, for example, slavery, if that was true.
		But they do very much rely on a board.
		And out in Mount Vernon, you have the ladies of Mount Vernon who tend to be conservative and don't necessarily want to tell those stories.
		And so they sort of dictate what the experience is and how a million people, you know, millions of people a year experience presidential history.
		The Obama Library is more of a community center.
		It's being built still, but it has, I've never seen a presidential library with a giant slide in it or a basketball court.
		So that's incredible.
		There's just constant fundraising and also constantly running out of money.
		It is not a comfortable position.
		And a lot of the, they're not, you know, every president doesn't get a presidential library for this reason.
		It's very hard to raise money.
		But I think that they're wonderful centers of learning.
		And again, something that if you live near any sort of presidential home, museum, library, go today.
		It would be a wonderful moment to interact with this history and this day.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Alexis Coe is a presidential historian, senior fellow with New America, author and sub-stacker.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Appreciate your time and happy President's Day.
unidentified		Thank you, you too.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Coming up a little later this morning on the Washington Journal, 9 a.m. Eastern, we'll be joined by Juan Williams.
		We'll talk about his new book, New Prize for These Eyes, the Rise of America's Second Civil Rights Movement.
		And after this break, we're going to return to our question about who's your favorite president and why.
		Phone numbers for Republicans, Democrats, and Independents on your screen.
		Go ahead and start calling in.
		And as you do, we want to show you one of some of our new member interviews.
		New members of the 119th Congress have been sitting down with C-SPAN to talk about their lives, their careers, why they ran for Congress.
		It's 9.30 p.m. tonight.
		We'll be showing several of those, but wanted to give you a little bit of a preview so you tune in later this evening.
brandon gill ▲ ● ▼		After graduating, I worked in finance for several years, first as an investment banker and then as an equity analyst at a hedge fund for several years.
		So got to really see, experience the private sector, got to work long hours once again, but got to see a little bit of what the real world is like, how our global financial system works, and what is the plumbing of the global economy.
		So I think it provided a really strong foundation, not only for what I'm doing now, but for a general understanding of how this world really works.
sarah mcbride ▲ ● ▼		The most formative experience in my own life was serving as the caregiver to the person who would become my husband, Andy, during his battle with cancer.
sarah mcbride ▲ ● ▼		And for anyone who's been diagnosed with cancer, particularly if you've been diagnosed in your 20s as Andy was, you know it is like a punch in the gut unlike anything you've ever experienced.
unidentified		You never expect to hear that word at such a young age.
unidentified		But from those first moments after his diagnosis, Andy and I knew how lucky we were.
sarah mcbride ▲ ● ▼		We knew how lucky Andy was to have health insurance that would allow him to get care that would hopefully save his life.
		And we both knew how lucky we were to have flexibility with our jobs that allowed him to focus on the full-time job of trying to get better and me to focus on the full-time job of caring for him, of loving him, of marrying him.
		And eventually when he found out that his cancer was terminal to walk him to his passing and I decided to run for office because I do not believe that in Delaware, our state of neighbors, or here in the United States in the wealthiest, most developed nation on earth, at that time and that ability to get care should be a matter of luck.
unidentified		I believe it should be the law of the land.
addison mcdowell ▲ ● ▼		So in 2016, we lost my little brother Luke to a fentanyl overdose, fentanyl that's here and shouldn't have been.
unidentified		And so we lost my little brother.
unidentified		He was 20 years old, and it was tragic.
addison mcdowell ▲ ● ▼		And I tell people it's like losing an arm and having to go through life without something that should be there that's not.
unidentified		So it drove me to do this and to run for Congress.
		That's why I'm here.
		Tell us more about how you felt when that happened.
addison mcdowell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, it was the hardest part was the shock, the shock of like, this was very unexpected, and it hurt that way.
addison mcdowell ▲ ● ▼		But having to see my mom and my dad and what that did to them, you know, losing a son or daughter is very different than losing a sibling.
unidentified		And as a father now, I understand that.
addison mcdowell ▲ ● ▼		But, you know, it was shocking.
unidentified		And then you've got to figure out how to move forward.
addison mcdowell ▲ ● ▼		And you can either stop and just feel bad for yourself or you can do something about it.
unidentified		And I wanted to do something about it.
unidentified		Washington Journal continues.

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