I'm defining [presidential courage] pretty narrowly. It's not only taking a big political risk but it's also the risk that in the hindsight of history, people think it's wise.

A lot of it was, you know, you look for moments where, for instance, we were dependent on Abraham Lincoln making sure that the slaves were freed or John Kennedy bringing civil rights, or the first one I wrote about, George Washington trying to stop the British from invading and ending this country before it even began. Those were turning points where, if you had not had a president stepping up to the plate, if there wasn't a story like that, we would not be here.

The Founding Fathers would be sorry to see that America had become so divided and factionalized.

Under the system that we now have to nominate presidential candidates, for instance, I would prefer that we have a system that is closer to, say, the one we had in the 1960s.

What if we had a culture that prevented these presidents from being courageous? And I worry now that we have a system that makes it very hard to choose people who would make the same courage choice as our great presidents. And I guess what I would say is, in this next campaign, take a look at the people who are running. If they don't remind you of the great presidents, do not vote for them.

The founders were very worried that if parties developed in America, you might have something like the modern Italian system, where you have 20 different parties that divide Congress and the country and can't govern.

To people who remember JFK's assassination, JFK Jr. will probably always be that boy saluting his father's coffin.