as much as in lincoln's era. we are in the midst of the presidency of another tall resident whois would not have been possible without lincoln. the same states as lincoln. there are big questions about whether that coalition can in ndure to transfer power to the key aid of the twice elected president. today the grant and illinois born hillary clinton. these mentions of illinois raise a third question, why here? the university of illinois between springfield and chicago is lincoln's university. as we are prepared to celebrate our own centennial next year, we must never forget we were among

the first group of land-grant universities created in 1867 by the acts signed into law by lincoln five years earlier, and the only in lincoln's home state . one reason i was drawn to take the job as law dean is the prospect that the university of illinois can he come linked with ellington in the way that the university of virginia is associated with thomas jefferson mind, was not as great of a president or person. why bob woodward? that might be the easiest. many consider "the new york times" the newspaper of record. bob woodward is america's reporter of record at "the post." he is responsible for two pulitzer prizes for coverage of watergate and 9/11. he is more than a reporter.

he is a insightful and prolific reporter. he has written or cowritten 12 number one best-selling more than books -- any other contemporary american author. a native of illinois and a graduate of yale who spent five years in the navy, he has won nearly every major american journalism award. i am pleased he is our leadoff lecture goes his book "the brethren" exposing the supreme court's operations to outside decision ofd in the mine and my older brother to attend law school. i've read it over half a dozen times over 25-years, including when i worked for justice black men.

it was penned almost 40 years ago. all of this brings me to the last question, and the only one that seems hard. how did we get mr. woodward to share his thoughts with us? the answer turns out to be simple. asked. i heard long before people knew who he was, mr. woodward would orermine whom he wanted needed to talk to for a project, rightly, and worth say "i am bob woodward from the washington post and i need your help." when we explained to him why we needed his help on this project, he graciously obliged. it turns out above all of his accomplishments and talents he is a generous and kind man to whom it is my privilege to turnover at the podium. [applause]

bob: thank you. thank you. here.great to be i do not have a coat and tie because i was stranded out of washington for a week because of the snow. the dean generously offered his best suit. i declined. my daughter who is a freshman in college said "now you look like a real professor -- underdressed." it is a genuine pleasure for me to come to a law school or talk to lawyers, which i have had the opportunity to do for many decades. my father was a lawyer in

illinois, wheaton illinois outside of chicago. a circuit judge who became an appellate judge. i was raised in a household where he trimmed into me -- --mmed into me the following always carefully pay attention to the lawyers, because they have the most profound and meaningful, lasting things to , unless you listen carefully. [laughter] advice for journalist. i want to tell one lawyers story that connects to lincoln and a way. this was the 1980's. we were doing a lot of stories

about the cia covert operation in the reagan administration. they were trying to prevent us from publishing these stories. it was a big debate with a lot of pandering. at one point on a saturday morning i went to see edward bennett williams, the very famous criminal lawyer. andas my personal attorney post."nted "the i went into his office and said, i need your advice to talk about these tough decisions over whether to publish national security secrets. he said, just a minute. i need to tell you something. what is that? i represent hugh, i represent "the post," the cia director bill casey personally.

i am general counsel to president reagan's foreign intelligence advisory board. toaid, ed, wait a minute read your present me, the post, the cia director, the president -- isn't there a conflict somewhere in this? he smiled and looked at me and said, i like to represent the .ituation a lawyer's dream. theou look at lincoln and way he used his powers during waysivil war, in so many he is a lawyer and president representing the situation. i want to identify some of the characteristics that i think lincoln had. then -- let big go through the

list. acceptedall, lincoln himself into who he was. he was a pragmatist. he had a moral center. he had a sense of strategy. whategy is trying to plan you want to do in one year or six months, not just crisis manage. he also had a strategic patience . he was not in a hurry, even on the most vital matters. he was persistent. he was ruthless as commander-in-chief and war -- in war. he understood the importance of morale for the troops and generals. he understood the importance of human relations in carrying out his office.

he was a big ego. a giant ego. ego.d a giant he probably had no real friends. he was probably the most activist president. he almost believed in executive supremacy. he waged the civil war without a as thetion of war, constitution literally required. he suspended habeas corpus in various regions. he justified in defending what he was doing that it made no sense to "lose the nation and yet preserve the constitution." books and a number of doing research about lincoln, there is a book by joshua shank

called lincoln's melancholy. , and there is truth to this that lincoln had i think if you examine that deeper it was a habit of intersection -- introspection. in the book, he said the following, which i found striking. "what primarily accounted for lincoln's success and his relevance was not his own growth to a place to where he could speak to the countries need, but the country's regression to a place where lincoln was needed." an assistant who works for me

looked through this and said "you know, lincoln was in many ways like the batman of --istopher nolan's trilogy not the hero we deserve, but the hero we needed." i think that is true. he was the most modern of the presidents. if you look at the politics of this country we are at a pivot point in history. it is vital that the next president, whoever that might be, gets some things r ight,, or at least comprehend impact andons meaning of failure to get those .mportant things right over 40 years of writing about tosidents and trying

understand them, i have asked myself the question "what is the job of the president?" my answer is that the job of the president is to figure out what the next stage of good is for a majority of people in the ,ountry, then develop a plan then carry out that plan. it must read the next stage of good for real majority, not one party or one interest group. realize that this notion i had been using for a long time was one of the points lincoln made in one of his speeches. it was february 1860 as president elect. holdid the following: "i

duty man exists it is his to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in andliar reading mankind, without entering on the details of the question now, i will say that i am for those means which will lead the greatest good to the greatest number." yes, it is true. america is the last great hope, as lincoln said. i think lincoln realized that failure was possible. the country was young when he was president. not yet powerful. america was an experiment. 2016, thenow, in experiment is not over. what i would like to do is

review the 8 residents i have on and distill out what they may have learned from lincoln, or maybe should have learned from lincoln. said thee scholars following about lincoln. what gave lincoln his enormous strength in relations to others was that he had learned early in life to accept himself. he knew he was ugly, ungainly, awkward in society,un-taught and as ar by himself, congressman, for one term, unsuccessful. the great point was that he did not resent those deficiencies.

he neither tried to cover them up, nor refer to them continuously from embarrassment. they were part of him, and he accepted all of themselves as inevitable. as a fact of nature. realization that freed him from some of the demons that have plagued other presidents." i think specifically of richard nixon, which i will dwell on probably too long. lincoln was a pragmatist in an important way. government rests in public opinion. whoever can change public opinion can change the government. the he did was identify

essential element of democracy. he also said, "with public sentiment, nothing can fail. without it, nothing can succeed. consequently, he who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts laws or pronounces decisions." a clear dig at the congress and supreme court. part of what he did and how he handled the press during the civil war, he makes a number of important points. what lincoln did, and this is reflective of the pragmatism, he did not initiate press suppression. he remained ambivalent about his execution. he seldom intervened to prevent it.

he let it go. he said, and made it very clear, that the secretary of war has my authority to exercise the executive discretion on this matter. it was his way of saying he represented the situation and he was going to delegate it to somebody else, because it was a task that was difficult and he kept his hands off it directly. the most important part about lincoln, of course, is that he had a moral center. he had that sense of strategy, strategic patience, as a bash as i -- as i mentioned. the great achievement, the emancipation proclamation, if you look at the histories of this, what he did, he reeled it

out over a long period of time. he didn't just declare it. he had meetings with reporters and editors. there were coordinated weeks. theoordinated leaks to freed blacks, or to religious leaders. this went on from july to september of 1862. he knew he needed a military success, and he waited until he got it. what he did then, he announced he was going to free the slaves on january 1 if the rebellion did not end. it's, of course did not end. , and the military order, which is what the emancipation was, really was an invitation to

slaves to leave their masters. this pragmatism that he had his -- he had, and it is something to measure candidates by, it went far and deep for lincoln. harry williams said that lincoln would not have been able to comprehend the attempts of modern writers to classify his ideas into an ideology. indeed, he would have not known what an ideology was. don hays quotes lincoln saying "my policy is to have no policy." very important to the way he conducted not just the war, but everything else. how he conducted the war is very

instructive and i think important as we start looking at some of the last presidents. he supported lincoln. the great humanitarian supported the scorched-earth economic strategy carried out by grant and general sherman. and agreed that brutal aggression was the only way to subdue the rebellion. lincoln did not like war. he thought it was terrible. but a larger purpose and the strategy to save the union was key to this. he also understood the importance of morale for everyone, in that country in the military. on july 14, 1863, he wrote union

general meade a letter after mead had failed to pursue generally following union victories in gettysburg and vicksburg. so what the letter said was the following "my dear general, i do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune and that was involved in lee's escape. he was within your easy grasp. and to enclose upon him with connection without other late successes would have ended the war. as it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely. i am distressed immeasurably because of it. " dated, lincoln did

not send the letter. he realized it would be too graphic an attack on the general. i sometimes have thought, if we could get the unset letters or e-mails of presidents or presidential candidates, we would learn a great deal about them. we would also learn that it is important sometimes to write these things out and not linger on them. the other important part, and this is the core aspect of lincoln, how he understood the importance of human relations. i remember sometime in the 1990's, katharine graham, who had been the owner and publisher of the "washington post" for years, was working on her autobiography.

i ran into her and she said, oh, the weirdest thing happened last night. i was at a reception and jimmy carter, the former president was there. and carter came up to her and put out his hand and said, oh, mrs. grant, i admire you so much. i like you so much. and mrs. graham said to me -- you know what i thought? what the fuck? [laughter] sorry, we are in an academic environment where we can quote people accurately. she said, now think of this. we fought with carter and his administration for years. the whole time he was there, we couldn't find out what was going on. there was no real relationship. and then she made the larger

point, which is critical. she said, you know, it's hard not to like someone who says they like you. true. if you are in disagreement with somebody or you are negotiating with them and they say, you know, i like you, not all the barriers come down, but some of them. lincoln realized this in so many ways. when he was a private lawyer in the 1850's, he was involved in a lawsuit where edwin stanton, the country's foremost lawyer was involved in this case in ohio. and stanton and lincoln -- lincoln learned stanton would speak very negatively about lincoln and call him privately a backwoods bumpkin. stanton was a democrat and he

later practiced law in washington and there was still this bad mouthing of lincoln the whole time. and what did lincoln do? he appointed stanton secretary of war. and it turned out that stanton was one of the best war chiefs the united states ever had. after lincoln was assassinated, it was stanton who said, as he is remembered, "now he belongs to the ages." and so lincoln was able to bring people, even an enemy, close to him and use them for his purpose. this sense of human relations, much is talked about in the history about lincoln's second inaugural address.

if you look at it in the context of pragmatism and human relations, and read what that second inaugural said, with malice toward none, with charity towards all, with firmness in the right is god gives us to see -- as god gives us to see the right. let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne and carried the battle, and for his widow and for his orphan. to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. that is just pragmatism. that is human understanding.

the eight presidents i have tried to understand and write about, nixon, august 8, 1968, accepting the republican nomination for president, nixon said the following. "the next president will face challenges which in some ways will be greater than those of washington or lincoln. " astonishing thing to say from somebody who has been nominated to run in one party. nixon's argument was, well, we are at or abroad and at half. -- and at home. and then he said, "the long dark night for america is about to end." let me read that again. nixon, august 8, 1968, "the long

dark night for america is about to end." it was six years to the day on august 8, 1974, that nixon announced his resignation. and it was gerald ford who responded to the nixon resignation in watergate by saying, "our long national nightmare is over." [laughter] april 29, 1974, before nixon was -- he was three months before -- away from resigning. the house impeachment inquiry had subpoenaed more tapes. what makes days was to invoke

lincoln in defending his argument to not comply with the subpoena. lincoln at an equivalent time in his presidency was being subjected being to unmerciful attack. a book i did in the fall called the last of the president's men about alexander butterfield, who revealed nixon's peeping system -- taping system and spirited away thousands of documents from the white house, the nixon white house, that he gave to me. now you sit and dream is a reporter somebody spiriting thousands of documents out of the white house. and among the documents that butterfield took and butterfield's account of what happened -- i think it was

christmas eve 1969, nixon was president and went for a tour of the executive staff offices in the office building next to the and he discovered that there were about a dozen support staff who had victors of john f. kennedy in their office. nixon went bananas. he called that her field in who -- cold butterfield in who was deputy chief of staff at the time. this this is "an interest in of kennedy pictures. i want them out. i want the replaced with -- you guessed it -- next and -- nixon pictures. butterfield launched an investigation of this and was able to persuade people that it was not proper, that it was suggestive way disloyal if you

had pictures of other presidents in your office. i was kind of skeptical of the story. and then there was a document that butterfield road directly to the president, and the of the was, sanitization executive office building. sanitization, as if it was some disease because that people had pictures of another president. what do you think lincoln's response would have been if he discovered that there were staff people in the white house, or the government, who had portraits of george washington, or thomas jefferson? unthinkable and this inability -- and if you

trace the nixon story, you see that he is not accommodated to the idea of who he is, the opposite of lincoln. when gerald ford became president, the next year, one of the things he said, again, contradicting nixon, "none of our problems today are as severe as those facing lincoln." he quoted one of the things lincoln said of one of force natural spontaneous statements of humility. when a dispute with congress, he said, well, lincoln said the following. we of the congress in this

administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. ford also said of lincoln that his compassion, lincoln's compassion for others, came from an understanding of himself. the kind of merging somewhat of the pragmatism and the tryst egypt -- and the strategic sense of what the country needs, and excellent example of this is gerald ford. september 1974, ford had been president about one month, and he went on television. some of you may remember this. and said he was getting nixon a

full pardon for watergate. and any other crime he may have committed. now ford, of course, when on television early on a sunday morning, hoping no one noticed. [laughter] but it was widely noticed, but not by me. i was asleep. and my collie carl bernstein, , called me up and said, have you heard? i said i haven't heard a thing. i was asleep. and carl, who then and still has the ability to say what occurred with the most drama in the "the son of asaid btch pardoned the son of a itch." [laughter] and i was able to figure out what had occurred. i thought perfect. nixon goes free. they only want to get a

watergate pardon. it is the ultimate corruption. and, i think, if you look at the polling at that time, and the suspicions about the pardon, that was a widely held view. you can argue, and i think the historians of the 1976 election, carter,d lost to jimmy the pardon had an aroma that there was a deal that something untoward had occurred. and i believed this. i had real strong convictions that, in a sense, this was a perfect corruption of watergate. 25 years later, i undertook one of my projects, which became a book called "shadow of the legacy of watergate, and the

presidencies of 40 through clinton." and i called him gerald ford. i had never met him. i had never interviewed him. i asked to talk to him about the pardon. and he said sure, come on up. he was in new york at a board meeting. and i had the luxury of time, to full-time assistance. we looked at all the contemporary coverage of the pardon, got all the memoirs, got the legal memos from the ford library. i kept going back to interview ford. and to try to piece together what happened. i interviewed him in colorado in number of times, where he had a home, and many times add his main home at rancho mirage, i remember the last interview asking him why did you pardon nixon? he said, you keep asking that question.

but i don't think you've answered it. and then he said, astonishingly, ok, i'm going to tell you. he then said what happened is nixon'shaig, who was chief of staff came and offered , me a deal. he said, if you guarantee that the president will get a pardon, he will resign and you get the presidency. and ford said, however, i rejected that deal. i knew i was going to become president. nixon was finished. so, there is no way he could work a deal in the way haig described. passionately, ford said, look let me tell you what happened. , at that time, ford had a

letter from the watergate prosecutor saying that nixon is going to be investigated as a citizen, likely will be indicted, tried, probably be convicted and go to jail. twoord said he will have more years of watergate. the country could not stand it. and there was this plaintive tone that he had of i needed my own president. the cold war was still going on. the economy was in great danger. and then he said he acted preemptively to get nixon off the front page and out of our lives. and i remember writing this part about the pardon and realizing ford was right.

what he did was quite gutsy. and this is in the book. and after the book came out, caroline kennedy, the daughter of john f. kennedy called me up and said, you know, i've read your book. my uncle, ted kennedy, has read it. we agree and we are going to give gerald ford the profiles in -- and courage award that is given out by the kennedy library once a year. and it is not going to be an award for being president or for being gerald ford. it is going to be for the single act of pardoning richard nixon. and she said in the tradition of her late father about , politicians who do things that are contrary to their own interest in the national interest.

i did not go to the ceremony, but i watched it and it was a cold shower for me. because teddy and he got up and said, look, at the time of the pardon, i denounced it almost as 25 orinal act, and now, so years later, you look at it and you realize it was exactly brother'sdition of my book " "profiles in courage." -- profiles and courage are coming i remember watching this and thinking here i was convinced it was an act of maximum corruption, the pardon was. and then it is examined many years later, dispassionately.

and what looked like corruption, was actually an act of courage. sobering for somebody in my business. you can say, oh yeah, this war made no sense. this was a good work, and so forth. and then the decades go by, and it may look quite differently. jimmy carter, as somebody using lincoln in december 1979, as he was gearing up to run for reelection, in one of his speeches, carter said, at the height of the civil war, lincoln said, "i have but one task and that is to save the union. then carter went on to compare his responsibility in getting

the 50 iranian hostages out as the same problem. he said he would devote his concerted efforts to that. and you look again at the histories of this and jimmy obsessed with 50 americans. and to compare it with lincoln's efforts in the civil war to save the union doesn't quite parse. but at the same time, in 1978, carter is president, any of you remember what he did at camp david when he invited menachem anwar saddam the

, egyptian president and took them to camp david and they reached a kind of peace treaty. it did not solve the problems in the middle east, but it was a big step forward. i remember i was amazed at what carter did and the persistence of doing this. i asked one of carter's aides well, how did he pull this off? and the aid that was very close to carter said, look, if you had been locked away at camp davis with jimmy carter for 13 days, you, too, would have signed anything. [laughter] persistence can sometimes achieve great things. ronald reagan, what is interesting about reagan and reagan used lincoln politically.

in a interesting way, reagan understood abraham lincoln. july 17, 1980 at the republican convention, reagan accepts the nomination. and he quotes lincoln. so, president lincoln said "no administration by any extreme of wickedness, or folly and injure theously government in the short space of four years." then reagan said, "if mr. lincoln could see what's happened in this country in the last 3.5 years he might hedge on , that statement." in other words, the carter years. reagan also said in his inaugural in 1981, "whoever

would understand in his heart the meaning of america will find it in the life of his family can -- will find in the life of abraham lincoln." truth. truth. and i think he got it. in 1984, when reagan was running for reelection, he said, i want to quote president lincoln. lincoln said, "we must distance -- we must dissent all ourselves nthrallust dise ourselves from the past, and then we will save our country." and reagan went on to say, "four years ago, that's what we did.

we saved the country." reagan says that he shared many points of philosophy with lincoln. a couple of times, he called him father abraham. president george bush senior seemed to understand the duality of lincoln. he said, if you look at some of the paintings of lincoln, you see his "agony and his greatness." and he equates the two. he then also says, bush senior, lincoln was at once a hard and gentle person, a man of grief and yet of humor. president clinton used lincoln to argue and said lincoln saw that it was the clear duty was to revive the american dream

and then clinton said, another responsibility is to revive the american economy. one thing my assistant found in -- january 1998, president clinton was here at the university of illinois talking about the land-grant colleges. and it was not a particularly memorable speech, but at one point, and it is hard to believe this happened, but it did. "oh, i think we can would have liked the pep band. [laughter] i did a little checking, and someone said, he spotted someone he liked in the pep band. [laughter]

we will never know. george w. bush, as president, talked about making quite a bit. george w. books on bush's wars and afghanistan and iraq. it he is trying to explain what his plan was after 9/11 and he said the following -- "i am product of the vietnam era. i remember presidents trying to wage wars that were very unpopular and the nation split. he then points to a portion of abraham lincoln that hung in oval office, and he said "he is , on the wall because the job of

the president is to unite the nation. that's the job of the president." president obama on lincoln, a month after obama's non-euro he -- obama's inaugural, he just said "lincoln made my own story , possible. and that is exactly true. i remember interviewing president obama about the afghan war for a book i did called 2010" about the decisions obama made. this, i sente like him a 15 page memo saying that this is what i would like to ask

obama because every president now lives in an environment where there are two questions at press conferences. questionthe shouted and the kind of "gotcha" environment. so when you send a long memo , saying i've worked for a year on this and i would like to talk to you and here are the questions, presidents tend to respond. so, when i am interviewing him about afghanistan and what his decisions were -- you may recall in his first year he ordered 30,000 more american troops to the afghan war. try at the end, i wanted to to ascertain how he looked at war. convinced it's very

important that presidents be top in their articulation of what the united states will do and what it will do to preserve its interests. sell, at the end of the interview, i handed president obama a quote from a book called "day of battle" by a former colleague at the "washington post." in the middle of the book, rick pulls back and says i'm going to tell you about war. and this is the quote that i handed obama. it said essentially that war corrupts everything. -- everyone. that no heart leaves war and stained because it is the necessary call of killing other people.

and obama said, i in sympathetic to this. and he said, go read my nobel prize acceptance speech. well, i had seen the nobel prize acceptance speech. i've read it and i have understood it. it happens to me too often. so, i went home, and got out the speech. and there, in plain english, obama says, yeah, wars sometimes necessary, but then he said it is always an expression and manifestation of human folly. and i realized at that point he just does not like war. and the problem is, when you are involved in a war as commander in chief, you've got to really be tough.

a couple of years ago, i was having breakfast with a world leader, head of government of one of our closest allies. and i asked about obama. he said, obama is so smart and i like him. but then he said, but no one is afraid of him. and my heart sank because i realized that the distaste, the disgust for war looms so large with obama that he has not conveyed the message of fear. which is what a leader must do. what is interesting is lincoln was the master of this. lincoln was the one who knew that general sherman's march

through georgia was necessary to win the war. the other interesting thing about lincoln is that he was a fatalist. this idea that events are inevitable, and kind of -- is kind of the mystique about him. it was 2005. i was giving a talk like this in washington. and hillary clinton, then senator from new york, was there also giving a speech. and after the speeches, we chatted and she said, oh, i quote from one of your books on bush so often that i think i should pay you royalties. i stupidly said, no, rather than how much? [laughter]

i said, what do you quote. -- i said, what you quote? that it is the plan of attack, george bush's decision to invade iraq. and it's the last line of the book. bush. sent questions to we had done hours of specific interviews, and he was standing in the oval office with his , and i just pockets asked, i'm not quite sure how the question came to mind because it was not on the list of questions i had. it was how do you think history , will judge your iraq war? and bush -- i think the mention of history caused him to think

about those exams in history at yale that he did not do that well on. [laughter] flinched but he takes his hands out of his pockets and says, history? we won't know. we'll all be dead. [laughter] a less than comforting thought. but if you think about it, it's true. , the point of gerald ford. it looks one way and then, in history, it may look the opposite. so, i asked senator clinton, why do you quote that? , youhe said, oh, well can't think and talk like that and the president of the united states. i said, what you mean? she said, you just can't. you've got to take charge. you got to do things. you can't leave it to the historians.

and i thought if he ever became resident and make a big decision , and someone was in the oval office asking how history might look at it, her -- might look at it, she would say, i can write it. [laughter] she pounded her fist, i was pushing back a little bit and, she said, you just can't. you just can't give yourself over. to make her point, she said, george washington would have never talked like that. and she really pounded her fist again and said, jefferson would never talk like that. never talk like that. [laughter] and i envisioned the new mount rushmore.

[laughter] jefferson, bill, and maybe hillary. [laughter] and i was going to say something. and, but i caught myself and thought, we both know, we will all be dead. [laughter] there.ing to stop thank you so much. you did me a big favor by inviting me. thank you. [applause] >> that was terrific, bob. ,n behalf of the college of law i want to thank you for that

elegant and profound essay. we have a small gift you may remember your visit here this evening. before we depart, i want to thank a lot of people who worked very hard to make this a sothwhile event come off smoothly. the communication and events folks, especially terry turner, who put in a lot of time and work closely on this great campus. i want to thank everybody and wish you a wonderful night. [applause] >> you are watching american history tv, all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook at c-span history. >> next on american history tv, -- donor doc paxson

papson discusses his book "secret lives of the underground railroad in new york city: sydney howard gay, louis napoleon and the record of fugitives." the record of fugitives was an published text kept by .bolitionist, sydney howard gay a free black who helped many runaway slaves escape to freedom. the greenwich village society of the greenwich village society of a story preservation hosted this hour-long program -- this hour long program. >> i am the director programs. it is a nonprofit organization founded in 1980 two preserve and protect this wonderful architectural heritage and total history that we have and what i think is the best neighborhood in the whole world. but of course, i'm slightly prejudiced. what can i do? says something about midtown, but i didn't really listen. anyway, i look around this beautiful