With the Bark Off: Conversations on the American Presidency LBJ Foundation

New York Times bestselling author A.J. Baime joined us to discuss the famous outcome of the presidential election of 1948. Baime is the author of The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months that Changed the World (2017), The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War (2014), Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans (2009), and Dewey Defeats Truman: The 1948 Election and the Battle for America's Soul (2019).

Baime is a longtime regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and numerous other publications.

Last month, Mark Updegrove moderated a discussion at the Baker Institute for Public Policy, at Rice University, entitled "A presidential election with legal issues like no other." There, he interviewed two legal experts about the legal challenges faced by the GOP's leading presidential candidate, former President Donald Trump, one of the many unprecedented aspects of our presidential election later this year. Richard L. Hasen is Professor of Law and Political Science at UCLA and the Director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project. And Joshua Sellers is Professor of Law at the University of Texas at Austin.

Robert Gates served in public life for over 50 years. In 2006, he was named Secretary of Defense by President George W. Bush as our nation waged war in Afghanistan and Iraq. He would retain the position for President Barack Obama until 2011. Mark Updegrove talked to him recently before a full house at the LBJ Library, where he offered his reflections on an increasingly chaotic world, including the Israel-Hamas War, the War in Ukraine, the security threats posed by an increasingly aggressive China, and the struggles we face here at home

Heather Cox Richardson is professor of history at Boston College, and author of six major books about US history in the 19th Century. She also publishes the daily newsletter Letters From An American, which reaches nearly 2 million daily subscribers. She joined us at the LBJ Library to discuss her new book, and how she views our current political moment.

Jake Tapper is the chief Washington anchor for CNN, whose shows “The Lead with Jake Tapper” and “State of the Union” are fixtures of broadcast news. He joined us at the LBJ Library to share his reflections on the state of our democracy, the media landscape, President Joe Biden, and Biden’s presumptive Republican challenger in next year’s presidential election: former President Donald Trump.

Joshua Zeitz joins us to talk about the inner religious life of Abraham Lincoln, a subject of continued fascination to historians and biographers 150 years after his death.