    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 15 (Monday, April 17, 2000)]
    [Pages 771-774]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    Remarks at a Screening of PBS' ``The American President'' Documentary
    Series

    April 7, 2000

        The President. Thank you very much, and welcome. I want to say a
    special word of welcome to all the voices of the Presidents who are
    here--and they were supposed to give me a list of them--I don't know
    what happened, I just saw it. [Laughter] But I know we have Senator
    Bumpers, Senator Glenn, Senator Simon, Representative Rostenkowski,
    Governors Weicker and Weld. Bill Ferris, we welcome you here. And a
    special word of thanks to Sy Sternberg and his family. We appreciate the
    fact that New York Life has underwritten this.
        I also want to thank the coproducers, Philip Kunhardt, Jr., and
    Philip Kunhardt III and Peter Kunhardt. And there are some other voices
    here from the series: Ben Bradlee, Walter Cronkite, James Roosevelt,
    Charlie Rose--I don't know if he's here or not--and Tim Russert.
        Tonight this is a fitting way for us to open the first in a series
    of events celebrating the 200th anniversary of the White House. It is
    clearly the right thing to do to begin by honoring the lives of
    individuals who have roamed the halls and carried the burden of the
    Presidency within the walls of the White House.
        This room has not only witnessed historical events, it has played a
    role in shaping them. It has hosted 42 administrations and 41 different
    personalities, every President except George Washington. The East Room
    began as a laundry room for Abigail Adams--an auspicious beginning--
    [laughter]--reminding us that there are certain basic elements to this
    job.
        Thomas Jefferson and Meriwether Lewis laid maps and animal skins on
    this floor where you're sitting and charted the Lewis and Clark
    expedition. Later, in 1814, a banquet was being held here in this White
    House and in this room when James Madison sent Dolley word that the Army
    had miscalculated where the British were going to assault Washington,
    and he told her to cut Gilbert Stuart's painting of George Washington
    down and get out of the house as quickly as possible. She did, and they
    had to leave the banquet here. The British came in, ate the food, and
    then burned the White House. [Laughter]
        Later, this house and this room was the headquarters for battle-worn
    Union troops during the Civil War. President Roosevelt's children
    roller-skated here. Over the years, this room and this house have
    survived a

    [[Page 772]]

    major fire, two wars, a plane crash, and five weddings. And of course,
    it has been a gallery for some priceless art which embodies the history
    of this country.
        Each President in his own time has survived unique challenges,
    striving to fulfill the purpose of our Founders to form a more perfect
    Union. Tonight we will have the opportunity to see two of these
    selections from the ``American President'' series, the first documentary
    series ever to profile all of our Chief Executives.
        The first viewing is on the life of Thomas Jefferson. Every American
    President has been inspired by Jefferson, affected by his decisions,
    fascinated by his life story. He spent a lifetime shaping our new and
    ever-evolving democracy. It would become, as he said, more developed,
    more enlightened as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed,
    manners and opinions change.
        One hundred and fifty years later, our 35th President, John
    Kennedy--whose sister, Eunice, is with us tonight, and we thank you for
    coming--brought that same spirit of innovation and progress to the White
    House. His fleeting time in this house remains a singular story in our
    history. Our President for only a thousand days, he changed the way we
    think about our country, our world, and our own obligations to the
    future. The New Frontier inspired millions of Americans to take a
    personal responsibility for making our country stronger and more united.
    As he said, ``The New Frontier is not a set of promises. It is a set of
    challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people
    but what I intend to ask of them.''
        Many great people have called this house home. All of them, so far,
    have been white males of European descent. I am absolutely convinced
    that in the not-too-distant future, there will be a woman President, and
    a person of color will occupy the White House and the Oval Office. But
    the Presidency was not built by one person. And in a fundamental way, it
    has been carried forward by the American people since the beginning.
        I have spent a lot of time reading the histories of various periods
    in the White House and the biographies of some of my lesser known
    predecessors. One of the things that I hope this series will do is to
    give people a feel of the mixture of the personality and character and
    skills of a President and his time, and also a sense of what personal
    joys and tragedies surrounded Presidents.
        Just for example, Franklin Pierce, one of the only other Presidents
    who came from a small State and was a Governor, is generally accounted
    not to have been a very good President. But when you consider the times
    in which he served, I wonder whether Lincoln could have succeeded in
    1853, instead of 1861. And almost never do I hear anyone talk about the
    fact that when Franklin Pierce was on his way to be inaugurated, with
    his wife and his only child, he took the train from New Hampshire to
    Washington, and there was a minor accident in which 10 or 11 people
    received minor bruises. But his son fell on his head, cracked his spine,
    and died. He never recovered. His wife never recovered.
        I've often wondered why it was that Abraham Lincoln, who would have
    a hard time getting elected today because he had terrible periodic,
    persistent bouts of depression before he became President, was married
    to a wife who was bubbly and strong and happy and, as far as I know, has
    the distinction of being the only woman in American history to have been
    courted by three of the four candidates for President in 1860.
    [Laughter] For John Breckenridge and Stephen Douglas also pursued her,
    and clearly she made the right decision. [Laughter]
        But they had lost a child before they came to the White House. They
    lost another child here. She lost three half-brothers fighting for the
    Confederacy. And then all the carnage of the Civil War, the burden of
    the tragedies they faced broke Mary Todd Lincoln, and in history she is
    seen as a very different person from the person she really was for most
    of her life. And yet, in some magical way, all the personal and national
    trauma of that time was absorbed by Abraham Lincoln in a way that
    enabled him to become stronger, to overcome his own demons, to leave
    aside his own depression, and to become, in my view, the greatest
    President we ever had.
        So I hope when this whole series is done, there will be a greater
    appreciation for people like Rutherford B. Hayes, who Senator Glenn is
    the voice of in this series.

    [[Page 773]]

    Rutherford B. Hayes was one of four or five Union generals from Ohio who
    became President. After the Civil War, if you were a Union general from
    Ohio, you had about a 50 percent chance of becoming President.
    [Laughter] It's the only category in our history that has ever been like
    that. And a lot of the rest of us wish that it had been so easy.
    [Laughter]
        I hope we'll understand those people that we don't know very much
    about. I hope we'll have a better understanding of the personal
    circumstances that Presidents face. I hope we'll have a better
    understanding of how they fit with their times and how they overcame
    their difficulties, as President Lincoln did.
        Theodore Roosevelt once complained that he would never be viewed as
    a great President because he had the misfortune to serve when there was
    no great war. He couldn't have been more wrong. And I'm convinced his
    temperament was absolutely perfectly suited to the times in which he
    served. Ironically, since he complained about having no war, he's the
    only President ever to win the Nobel Prize for peace. [Laughter] Which
    all goes to show you, you've just got to show up every day and do your
    best. [Laughter]
        Now, I'd like to ask Sy Sternberg, the chairman of New York Life, to
    come up. And again, I think we should all thank him for making this
    evening possible. [Applause]

    [At this point, Seymour Sternberg, chairman and chief executive officer,
    New York Life Insurance Corp., made brief remarks and introduced
    coproducer Philip Kunhardt III, who made brief remarks and presented two
    clips from the series.]

        The President. Well, I would like to, first of all, congratulate
    Hugh Sidey and Richard Neustadt on the marvelous job they have done with
    this program, and all of you who are involved in it.
        When I was watching those two very important pieces of our history,
    I couldn't help feeling grateful for some of the things which have been
    passed down to the present day, to me. The day before I became
    President, I received a copy of the only book that Thomas Jefferson ever
    wrote, ``Notes From the State of Virginia,'' which is remarkable for its
    incredibly detailed analysis of everything about the State. But it's
    most important today because it contained the first known recording of
    Thomas Jefferson's condemnation of slavery. And it always struck me that
    every person in this job lives with a certain ambiguity, and I wondered
    how he dealt with it. But I'm grateful for what he left us.
        Shortly after I became President, Pamela Harriman gave me a copy of
    the ink blotter that President Kennedy used in his office in the White
    House, that Mrs. Kennedy had given to her husband, Averill, about 12
    days after President Kennedy was killed--with the letter that Jackie
    Kennedy had written. And because it was my great good fortune to know
    Jackie and her children, it is one of my most precious possessions.
    About once a month I open the ink blotter and read the letter again,
    just to remember how fleeting life is and what a great gift every day
    is.
        I think one of the most treasured pictures I have from my time in
    the White House is the picture I have of young John Kennedy looking at
    his father's portrait on a visit he made here, when we had a wonderful
    preview here of the great series on space that HBO did.
        So the history of the country goes on, and the families come and go.
    But you have given us a great gift tonight, and this whole series will
    be a great gift. And one of the things that I had hoped would occur, you
    have done, even with people who lived long ago: You have reminded us
    that for all their achievements and all their failures, they were also
    people.
        The great premise of democracy is that ordinary people will make the
    right decision most of the time; that no one is irreplaceable, but that
    freedom is.
        I hope you'll all join us now in the Dining Room for a reception.
    And thank you again, to the Kunhardts; thank you again, Sy; thank you
    again to PBS; and thank you all for coming.

     Note:  The President spoke at 8:25 p.m. in the East Room at the White
    House. In his remarks, he referred to former Senators Dale Bumpers, John
    Glenn, and Paul Simon; former Representative Dan Rostenkowski; former
    Governors Lowell P. Weicker, Jr., of Connecticut and William F. Weld of
    Massachusetts; Ben Bradlee, former executive editor, Washington Post;
    Walter Cronkite,

    [[Page 774]]

    former CBS News anchorman; James Roosevelt, grandson of Franklin D.
    Roosevelt; Charlie Rose, host of PBS' ``The Charlie Rose Show''; Tim
    Russert, host of NBC News' ``Meet the Press''; and Hugh Sidey, narrator,
    and Richard Neustadt, on-camera scholar, ``The American President.''
    This item was not received in time for publication in the appropriate
    issue.