Tell us about the project and what you're trying to achieve.

Well, thanks so much, Jeff.

It's great to be here.

In Pursuit is a project of the organization More Perfect, which is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to improving American democracy.

And there are five goals of American democracy that More Perfect is focused on.

This one falls squarely in the civics education component, trying to bring high-quality civics education to all Americans.

And what happened really was after I left the National Archives in 2025, a few weeks later, I got a phone call from a number of people that I know quite well, including John Bridgeland, who runs More Perfect, who is the CEO and founder of More Perfect Inc.

So, wow, what was it like to work with President Obama and tell us about his Lincoln essay?

So first, if you could just tell our audience a little bit about what is In Pursuit, and why did you put this project together?

Well, thank you.

It's great to be here.

Thanks, Eric, for moderating.

Thanks, Jack, for coming.

And also thanks to the Commonwealth Club for, for hosting us.

You did a great job in describing In Pursuit.

[laughs]

To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation, till his assent should be obtained.

And when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

We must therefore acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our separation and hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies solemnly publish and declare that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states.

Did Washington reflect on his own times? Did Lincoln write essays about the time, you know, that he was in Washington in his life?

It's a great question.

I don't think I mean, Washington, you know, not as much of a writer.

We know Washington was a voracious reader as he was.

became older, he read more and more, collected more books as he was able to.

Now Lincoln did write.

Lincoln kept what we might consider to be almost a journal, what other historians have called meditations.

Are we on the downslope of democracy in our nation?

Called In Pursuit, it calls upon former presidents and first ladies, like the Clintons, Bushes, and Obamas, historians and thought leaders, including multiple Pulitzer Prize winners, and journalists, including our own Judy Woodruff, each contributing an essay about a president or first lady, an idea born from Shogan's time leading the National Archives.

I visited all of the presidential libraries when I was the Archivist of the United States, and what I witnessed was that people can access American history through our presidents, through our first families.

It's familiar to them, and it's an easy way in which we can tell lessons about American history through that lens.

I used to walk into the rotunda on a daily basis where the founding documents are on display, and I got to talk to people from all across the United States.

No matter what their political affiliation or where they came from geographically in the United States, they're proud of our history and they understand, uh, that it is a mixture of good things that have happened, difficult challenges that have happened, and they wanna learn about it.

How do you view this effort in light of where we are?

I think we have to be accurate in our telling of American history.

When we're talking about, you know, the American story, and should we, uh, talk about our failures as well as our successes, how do you tell the story of American history accurately if you don't tell both? For example, uh, how do you tell the story of a success like an Abraham Lincoln? Uh, I think most Americans would view Abraham Lincoln, uh, his leadership, with a degree of admiration.