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Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: You have heard me talk to via that history is rhyming,
Speaker 1: that there's a familiarity in our recent history, early twentieth
Speaker 1: century with what the current situation is.
Speaker 2: We're in a we're in a we've got.
Speaker 1: These big tech titans, we had the big robber barons.
Speaker 1: And you've probably heard myself another say that, you know, boy,
Speaker 1: the country really needs a Teddy Roosevelt. And what's fascinating
Speaker 1: about Teddy Roosevelt is is that he's a Rorschach test.
Speaker 1: If you're a liberal, you love certain parts of him.
Speaker 1: If you're a conservative, you love other parts of him.
Speaker 2: He is somebody.
Speaker 1: He is like Lincoln in Washington and maybe to a
Speaker 1: lesser extent, Eisenhower, where it's the rare biography you can write,
Speaker 1: where there are interested people on the left and the right,
Speaker 1: and there are people that are devoted to say, no,
Speaker 1: he's really a progressive. No, he's really a conservative. He's
Speaker 1: a disruptor, he's this, and Teddy is definitely one of those.
Speaker 1: And let's just say I devour every Teddy Roosevelt book.
Speaker 1: I think I've only read more Lincoln books than Teddy
Speaker 1: Roosevelt books. He is clearly one of the most fascinating
Speaker 1: Americans we've ever had. My guest today is David Brown.
Speaker 1: He's got one of the more recent additions in the
Speaker 1: Teddy Roosevelt Library, if you will, This is called in
Speaker 1: the Arena, which of course is a homage to his
Speaker 1: a Man in the Arena speech back in the day.
Speaker 1: And this is a it is It is not just
Speaker 1: the Teddy of the Roosevelt presidency or the Roosevelt this
Speaker 1: it really is as much an attempt to capture the
Speaker 1: zeitgeist and the culture that was Teddy, that inspired Teddy,
Speaker 1: and the culture that he helped try to create and build.
Speaker 1: So that's my intro, David hod I do my selling.
Speaker 2: Your book pretty well?
Speaker 3: Wonderful.
Speaker 1: Yes, he's a magnet for historians like yourself, right, like
Speaker 1: Teddy is, just there's in the only challenge I imagine
Speaker 1: you had was writing something unique that others hadn't attempted.
Speaker 3: You know, you're right, here's a magnet, not because not
Speaker 3: just because it's an incredible life, really an incredible life,
Speaker 3: but that life that tells us so much about America,
Speaker 3: and I think what an a storying can bring to it.
Speaker 3: You know, five years from out twenty five years amount
Speaker 3: is the perspective of the culture. And so as you note,
Speaker 3: you know there's something of the times in this book.
Speaker 3: You know, it's a life, but it's also at times,
Speaker 3: and historians also bring, you know, additional perspective. They've seen
Speaker 3: additional presidents, they've seen people use and the views rosual reputation.
Speaker 3: We might read Roosevelt's actions differently in say nineteen fifty
Speaker 3: or twenty twenty five than we would have in nineteen ten.
Speaker 2: In the moment.
Speaker 3: So in that sense, I think that there's almost always something,
Speaker 3: something fresh, something interesting perspective that a storying can bring
Speaker 3: to a topic.
Speaker 1: How did you tackle this? I mean, there's, like I said,
Speaker 1: there is so much incredible scholarship on Teddy. You know,
Speaker 1: did you go how much core sort of you know,
Speaker 1: back to letters and all of that sort of the
Speaker 1: ground zero type research.
Speaker 2: How much did you.
Speaker 1: Either devour or avoid other takes on him?
Speaker 2: What was your balance? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I read the major biographies, but made notes selectively because
Speaker 3: I didn't want too much of the perspective to sink in,
Speaker 3: And I focused most of my research on Roosevelt's writings, letters,
Speaker 3: journals at the journal Pritt when he was younger, and
Speaker 3: as many many books. He was a voluminous writer he wrote.
Speaker 3: He wrote many books, and also the private papers, some
Speaker 3: of the newspapers, the culturea miliar the people who knew him,
Speaker 3: the people who loved him, the people who didn't love him,
Speaker 3: because I wanted to get a broad sense. But the
Speaker 3: man and the times, because I think that the two
Speaker 3: go hand in hand.
Speaker 1: I'm always curious of why an author chooses their subjects,
Speaker 1: and more importantly, when they choose their subjects. Is there
Speaker 1: something that was happening in the moment that made you
Speaker 1: turn there and you realize I want to unpack this,
Speaker 1: tell me walk me through. You've done a few other books,
Speaker 1: and so what drew you to Roosevelt? And when did
Speaker 1: you decide you wanted to tackle Teddy?
Speaker 3: So about twenty or thirteen years ago I started an
Speaker 3: a biography of Henry Adams and Henry Adams from the
Speaker 3: Great Adams family. It was a neighbor of Roosevelt's in Washington.
Speaker 3: Roosevelt was, of course living in the White House then
Speaker 3: Henry Adams was living well what is now the Hay
Speaker 3: Adams Hotel.
Speaker 1: Right across the street, although I think it's technically the
Speaker 1: building was across the street from the across the right. Anyway,
Speaker 1: there's some yeah, there's some origin story of the hotel itself,
Speaker 1: but yes, basically right there was those listed.
Speaker 3: So they knew each other. And Henry Adams was generation older,
Speaker 3: old money, like tr dry Wit, somewhat acerbic, and he
Speaker 3: saw not unlike Mark Twain, he saw Roosevelt as something
Speaker 3: of a big boy. Mark Twain said through to someone
Speaker 3: said basically this is this is this is Tom Sawyer.
Speaker 3: We have Tom Swear in the White House, and I
Speaker 3: just found Roosevelts excuse me, Adams's take on Roosevelt so interesting,
Speaker 3: so pungent, so provocative, and it kind of drew me in.
Speaker 3: And also I think writing that biography of Henry Adams,
Speaker 3: it drew me to the late nineteenth century. So I
Speaker 3: was on my graduate work. I tend to focus on
Speaker 3: America in the early Republic seventeen nineties, eighteen twenty, eighteen thirties,
Speaker 3: and there was a lot there in the late nineteenth century.
Speaker 3: Early wasn't aware of cultural history, intellectual history, so I
Speaker 3: do Henry Adams. I'm thinking there's a lot there about
Speaker 3: intellectual life at that time. Now I'm interested in the politics,
Speaker 3: so I'd obviously read something. You know, some things about
Speaker 3: Roosevelt before, but never systematic, never in depth, and so
Speaker 3: I started to read just for my own curiosity. And
Speaker 3: the deeper I got into it, the more I said
Speaker 3: to myself, you know, I really want to write on
Speaker 3: this guy. I want to write a biography. So it
Speaker 3: was deep in COVID back in twenty twenty, and that's
Speaker 3: when I started the project.
Speaker 1: What makes Roosevelt so intriguing to me is like Lincoln
Speaker 1: and Washington. He's a president. Like I said to a
Speaker 1: lesser excent Eisenhower that anybody running for president, far left
Speaker 1: or far right, moderate, centrist, you name it, would love
Speaker 1: to be compared favorably to said president.
Speaker 2: Right. And I have I've been having.
Speaker 1: An uncomfortable intellectual exercise which that i've i'm and I'm
Speaker 1: going to I'm this is with trepidation that I that
Speaker 1: I tiptoe on this, which is Donald Trump and Teddy Roosevelt,
Speaker 1: and the shocking amount of similarities that there are. There
Speaker 1: are some important differences. And if you're a fan of
Speaker 1: Teddy and not a fan of Trump, you probably recoil
Speaker 1: at this. But you know, there's there's there is something
Speaker 1: about Teddy in the time that he served of narcissism, right,
Speaker 1: I mean the original great quote the bride at every
Speaker 1: wedding and the and the corpse at every funeral was
Speaker 1: about him, right, you know it was it was said
Speaker 1: of him his daughter.
Speaker 2: Right. What do you make of it?
Speaker 1: And how much? How much do you see of it?
Speaker 1: And how did you avoid it? How did you write
Speaker 1: about it? You know, how did it? How did it
Speaker 1: influence you?
Speaker 3: Sure? I make some notes of this late in the book,
Speaker 3: last pages. The narcissism was there. The question is how
Speaker 3: do you deal with the narcissism and Roosevelt's it was
Speaker 3: all about Roosevelt, but there was a sort of generosity
Speaker 3: underlying Roosevelt, and that generosity I think really drew people
Speaker 3: to him. Of course, Trump has a wide appeal as well.
Speaker 3: Some of the similarities are a tremendous charisma on the
Speaker 3: part of both men. The loyalists, they've really been loyalists
Speaker 3: for both men. Roosevelt had a broader reach. Roosevelt got
Speaker 3: I think like fifty six percent of the popular vote
Speaker 3: in two thousand. Excuse me, the nineteen oh four acts.
Speaker 1: An important point you made that I didn't fully appreciate
Speaker 1: that it was. It was actually the most dominant vote
Speaker 1: total we'd had really in the.
Speaker 2: With the country that big at the time.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right. So he was really popular. He
Speaker 3: could really cross over. Trump doesn't have the crossover appeal,
Speaker 3: but to their loyalists, they could do no wrong. Roosevelts
Speaker 3: was seen by party regulars in the GOP as being
Speaker 3: a threat. You know, he was never supposed to be presidents.
Speaker 3: He was a war hero, and they made him a veep,
Speaker 3: and of course McKinley wasn't supposed to get shot and killed.
Speaker 3: But then Rooseveald becomes presidents and he's so popular that
Speaker 3: they can't do anything with him until Roosevelt decides that
Speaker 3: he's going to leave after a couple of terms and
Speaker 3: then once the crown back. And at that time, for
Speaker 3: GP regulars, this sort of gave currency to their concerns
Speaker 3: for the last few years that Roosevelt was a maverick,
Speaker 3: he was a loose cannon, He could not be trusted
Speaker 3: for party regularity, and they opposed him, and they were
Speaker 3: able to essentially keep them from getting the nomination in
Speaker 3: nineteen twelve, and in Roosevelt said that that this was stolen,
Speaker 3: that the people wanted him, and of course he then
Speaker 3: broke away from the party, which is said that Trump
Speaker 3: had talked about doing in twenty sixty. If the GOP
Speaker 3: at that time had kept the nomination from him.
Speaker 2: Don't we credit Teddy with primaries?
Speaker 1: Essentially that that that that that sort of it was
Speaker 1: right after that that we I think Oregon had the
Speaker 1: first presidential primary.
Speaker 3: There were there were there were there were a few,
Speaker 3: and they're about thirteen but in Reison actually got more
Speaker 3: votes and delegates in these thirteen primaries, right the sitting
Speaker 3: president did. And there's a number of reasons why these
Speaker 3: these these these primaries would expand, but one was that
Speaker 3: it was seen that that perhaps that people need to
Speaker 3: have more say and we would look back to, for example,
Speaker 3: nineteen twelve and say so, clearly the party wanted Taft
Speaker 3: to get the nomination, but clearly most garden variety Republican
Speaker 3: voters wanted Roosevelt.
Speaker 1: It's obviously the era that I think makes this an
Speaker 1: extra magnet for me right now. And there's always been
Speaker 1: something about Teddy, did it take a rich guy to
Speaker 1: go after rich guys?
Speaker 2: Did it?
Speaker 1: Meaning? You know that the progressive populist politics of that
Speaker 1: era only gets traction when a rich guy turned on
Speaker 1: rich guys.
Speaker 2: That's too simplistic.
Speaker 3: Not necessarily, he was a different kind of rich guy,
Speaker 3: like Henry Adams.
Speaker 1: Here was old money and inherited, inherited well, which is
Speaker 1: always important. I always find it fascinating. I track I
Speaker 1: love to see right now where billionaires go right, New
Speaker 1: billionaires support Trump, Inherited billionaires support the.
Speaker 2: Left right now. It's just an interesting era that we're
Speaker 2: in yeah it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Roosevelt did not like new money. Roosevelt thought
Speaker 3: that that that new money was essentially, you know, building
Speaker 3: factories and whatnot, which he recognized the country needed if
Speaker 3: it was going to be strong. But in his notion
Speaker 3: of the string of his life, sitting in an office
Speaker 3: all day just making money, there was nothing romantic, There
Speaker 3: was nothing important about that. It's going to lead to
Speaker 3: the country becoming soft and not sharp any longer. So
Speaker 3: he did feel I think when he called, for example,
Speaker 3: JP Morgan into the White House, that there was a
Speaker 3: sense of superiority on his side in reading, in culture
Speaker 3: and background. And if Morgan had a bit more money,
Speaker 3: which of course he did, that was okay because because
Speaker 3: Roosevelt had had some money too. But more important, I think,
Speaker 3: I think Roosevelt thought that he Roosevelt understood how money
Speaker 3: should be used, and people like this new rich they
Speaker 3: liked imagination. They didn't know what was best for the country.
Speaker 3: They only understood what was best for themselves.
Speaker 1: Why do you think he had this this sense, because
Speaker 1: I mean, is it because he went on his travels
Speaker 1: or you know, he did seem to at least understand.
Speaker 1: You couldn't concentrate this much power in the in in
Speaker 1: with these the titans of that era. But was his
Speaker 1: motivation because he didn't want them stronger than the government,
Speaker 1: or was his motivation because the little guy was getting hurt?
Speaker 3: I use all those things.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: He never called himself a populous and there was a
Speaker 3: populist party at that time is it Gradon farmers, And
Speaker 3: he thought that they were just radical and vaguely ridiculous,
Speaker 3: But there was a populistic bone in Roosevelt. He wrote
Speaker 3: to John Hey, the Secretary of State, after he Roosevelt
Speaker 3: had toured the country, and he said, you know, seeing
Speaker 3: these these common people out there who were standing in
Speaker 3: you know, by a train stession for two hours in
Speaker 3: the wintertime, you know, waiting to Henry talk. Uh, they're
Speaker 3: so sincere, there's so there's such hard workers. You know,
Speaker 3: we we we need to we need to do right
Speaker 3: by these people. He did believe that, he did believe
Speaker 3: that he that the presidency, that the government had a
Speaker 3: responsibility the people. So there was something also, I think
Speaker 3: a little bit of old money about that, the sense
Speaker 3: of paternalism where they're they're social work, economic betters so called,
Speaker 3: and we need to take care of them. That's our obligation.
Speaker 3: Also though when when he's thinking about obtaining the trust.
Speaker 3: But I think I think there's something about Roosevelt that
Speaker 3: is vaguely consulted, that that these that these titans, that
Speaker 3: they should have so much just because they invented something
Speaker 3: or they have a factory, And why should they have
Speaker 3: so much say in our politics? Why should why should
Speaker 3: they be able to put politicians in their pockets through
Speaker 3: through through lobby. So I think he sincerely saw them
Speaker 3: as something of a potential thread through public in a
Speaker 3: different way, but not unlike say Jefferson with the First
Speaker 3: National Bank and UNC Jackson with the Second National Bank,
Speaker 3: looking at money congealing together and saying, if this continues,
Speaker 3: this could be a real problem for the Republic moving forward.
Speaker 1: So let's let's let's do this intellectual exercise. What would
Speaker 1: Teddy be doing right now with the aim, with the
Speaker 1: with the with with the AI technology that we're trying
Speaker 1: to build, the infrastructure and the concentration of wealth that
Speaker 1: we're experiencing at the moment.
Speaker 3: I think if it was President's with AI, he would
Speaker 3: want to harness AI. He would he would want to
Speaker 3: use it to make you know, as as America as
Speaker 3: powerful as possible. That would also tie him with the
Speaker 3: second part of your question, because so these people who
Speaker 3: have this this this uh, this resource, some of the billionaires,
Speaker 3: I suspect that he would look upon them not unlike
Speaker 3: he looked upon the the rich class of his own day,
Speaker 3: which is they have a purpose. The purpose is to
Speaker 3: continue to be patriotic and contribute to the growing wealth
Speaker 3: of America. And they could have their nice houses and
Speaker 3: and and and and and and whatnot. But but he
Speaker 3: I think he would draw a real line uh at
Speaker 3: the kind of influence that these people would have. So
Speaker 3: I wouldn't see him inviting billionaires to be in his
Speaker 3: official cabinet family.
Speaker 1: And yet he's super transactional, particularly in foreign affairs.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Yes, he's he's he's savvy. Uh. He looks to get
Speaker 3: things done. He wants to build a canal. Not not
Speaker 3: in Panama because there's no country in Panama, but there's
Speaker 3: a province in Colombia. And when the Columbian Senate sort
Speaker 3: of bulks a little bit on what was supposed to
Speaker 3: be a done deal, then he will essentially, you know,
Speaker 3: support a independence movement, which which would not have succeeded
Speaker 3: with just.
Speaker 1: Let's just be let you're being a little gentle here.
Speaker 1: He manufactures this movement in this separatist region called Panama
Speaker 1: a little bit. There were certainly some independence people that
Speaker 1: were but it you know, it's it was a pretext, right.
Speaker 3: He sends ships and he sends men, and they will
Speaker 3: support and in a sense, it's it's what John F.
Speaker 3: Kennedy tried and failed to.
Speaker 2: Do with.
Speaker 3: Uh, you know, the the Cubans the quote unquote lead it,
Speaker 3: but there was American support, but there wasn't enough American support.
Speaker 3: Rose Alt, I'm sure that there was more than enough
Speaker 3: American support. So you're right, this is transactional here. He's
Speaker 3: very happy to play both with Columbia. When Columbia wouldn't
Speaker 3: play ball with him any longer, he gave Pen the ball.
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Speaker 1: you know, when you look deeper at Roosevelt's sort of
Speaker 1: point of view and actions in the Western hemisphere actually
Speaker 1: pale in comparisons to Trump's beltic.
Speaker 2: You know it.
Speaker 3: It was a different time, and so it's a period
Speaker 3: when that type of American imperialism, the so called Banana
Speaker 3: Republic era, is just beginning to take off. We had
Speaker 3: this early phase of American form policy. You know, except
Speaker 3: American Revolution, we're very Atlantic facing. And then you know,
Speaker 3: by the time you get to the eighteen twenties, thirties
Speaker 3: and forties and you're talking about bringing Florida and Texas
Speaker 3: into the Union, then we become a golf golf of Mexico,
Speaker 3: golf of America depends on who you talk to these days.
Speaker 3: That becomes the focus of our foreign policy, and then
Speaker 3: American it becomes this beginning of a global power in
Speaker 3: the late nineteenth century with with with the acquisition Philippines
Speaker 3: and whatnot. So the central in South America had always
Speaker 3: been sort of an abstraction. There was the Monroe Doctrine,
Speaker 3: but America didn't really have much power to police that.
Speaker 3: There were there were there were various individual filibuster attempts
Speaker 3: by American citizens with armies and whatnot private, although some
Speaker 3: were sort of okay by congressman senators to cut out
Speaker 3: parts of Central and South America. It's really not until
Speaker 3: about nineteen hundred.
Speaker 2: It's all through the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, there's a whole part in the Grand
Speaker 1: Presidency where there's where a bunch of Republicans want Canada
Speaker 1: as reparations for the UK's for Britain's role in the.
Speaker 2: In the Civil War.
Speaker 3: Sure too.
Speaker 1: I mean like it seems like we had all sorts
Speaker 1: of ambitions to grab parts of the Western hemisphere in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I got about one third of Mexico, so
Speaker 3: with with Roosevelt, and I'd also extend this, you know,
Speaker 3: to look at Woodrow Wilson. There then is is I
Speaker 3: think I think more over not simply using filibusters or threads,
Speaker 3: but actually you know, going into countries and and and
Speaker 3: putting putting some teeth into the Monroe doctrine.
Speaker 1: Well, and that was the thing I mean he almost
Speaker 1: wanted to. I mean it was interesting you used a phrase.
Speaker 1: I think he viewed it as a police you know,
Speaker 1: he wanted to police the governments in the Western hemisphere,
Speaker 1: you know, know what was going on, right, And it
Speaker 1: was almost the first use of the idea that we're
Speaker 1: going to be the global police force.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, so I think that there Bracklin Roosevelts
Speaker 3: related distantly, sort of get the credit for the American
Speaker 3: century and for this notion of when the Second World
Speaker 3: War's over, regard to the four policemen, you know, sort
Speaker 3: of take care of the world. And I think a
Speaker 3: lot of these ideas, including the social welfare state with
Speaker 3: the progressive here under results. I think actually the antecedents
Speaker 3: are there around nineteen five, nineteen ten. It's a result,
Speaker 3: but it's with the different Roosevelt. And so certainly, you know,
Speaker 3: Roosevelt have been the top cop in New York when
Speaker 3: he was a commissioner, and he took policing very seriously.
Speaker 3: He applies the concept not just to you know, a
Speaker 3: city or a state, but to an entire country. The
Speaker 3: countries will not live up to the obligations, he said,
Speaker 3: the name must be, they must be policed. Of course,
Speaker 3: what we know is happening here also is that there's
Speaker 3: a game that's being played by European countries as well,
Speaker 3: which is to get some of these but in American
Speaker 3: countries into debts and then it would be made to
Speaker 3: pay by for example, leasing a ports, we're opening up markets,
Speaker 3: and Roosevelt was very very quick to ensure that, for
Speaker 3: example Great Britain and in Germany, we're not going to
Speaker 3: be effective of doing that, violating the minor doctrine. But
Speaker 3: it was also tactic, as you suggested, that he from
Speaker 3: time to time employed as well.
Speaker 1: I want to go back to his days in New
Speaker 1: York politics, because that was a very machine heavy wing
Speaker 1: of the Republican Party in the eighteen eighties in the
Speaker 1: eighteen nineties. Was he seen as a good party man
Speaker 1: in the eighteen eighties and nineties because he was connected
Speaker 1: to wealthy patrons of Manhattan, or was he already being
Speaker 1: identified as a bit of a disruptor inside the party.
Speaker 3: He was always a bit of a disruptor. He was
Speaker 3: connected to wealthy people in New York. But many of
Speaker 3: these wealthy people, including must of the people in his
Speaker 3: Graderroting class at Harvard, thought he was nuts for getting
Speaker 3: involved in politics, at least politics at the local level.
Speaker 3: If somebody wants to bring you into their cabinet and
Speaker 3: make you Secretary of States. Well, then what kind of
Speaker 3: a service. But Rosewock came in at the low end,
Speaker 3: and he was questioned about this some of his friends,
Speaker 3: and he said, you know, either I'm going to be
Speaker 3: part of the willing class or I'm not, and I
Speaker 3: aim to be part of the ruling class. In other words,
Speaker 3: the ruling class had been losing its share ever since
Speaker 3: whenever under eighteen twenty eighteen thirty to Patricius right, And
Speaker 3: so Roosevelt is going to in effect try to reassert
Speaker 3: that no bless oblige do so in democratic age, Well,
Speaker 3: you've got to you got to get involved. He gets involved,
Speaker 3: but he was not. He was not a great party man.
Speaker 3: There's a maverick. There was a lot of talk in
Speaker 3: eighteen eighty four about the Republican Party's presidential candidate, James G. Blaine,
Speaker 3: as someone had the continental liar from the state of Maine,
Speaker 3: very controversial, reputed to be the dirty politician, had taken bribes,
Speaker 3: and so Roosevelt fought very hard as a young man
Speaker 3: to try to stop that nomination, and of course he
Speaker 3: couldn't at that time, but there was real question would
Speaker 3: you stay with the party or would you bolt And
Speaker 3: Roosel understood that if you bolt it, if he was
Speaker 3: not regular, then he would have really no chance. There
Speaker 3: was no way he was going to become a Democrat.
Speaker 3: At that time. The Democrat Party in the North was
Speaker 3: associated with with with the immigrants, with Irish. The South
Speaker 3: was associated with with with secession. And so he swallowed
Speaker 3: real hard and he became a regular politician in eighteen
Speaker 3: eighty four, and he gave campaign speeches on behalf of Blaine.
Speaker 3: But that was of the moment that was opportunistic, and
Speaker 3: he was always free. He thought to go his own way,
Speaker 3: and sometimes he did.
Speaker 1: Maybe this is the fault of some of the educators
Speaker 1: I have, but I've always tied William Jennings Bryan and
Speaker 1: Roosevelt oddly more together than separate. And yet they were
Speaker 1: on opposing tickets. Right, What did you think of William
Speaker 1: Jennings Bryan.
Speaker 3: So he was not a big Brian fan, probably for
Speaker 3: a few reasons, some would be political. He just didn't
Speaker 3: like Brian's politics. Brian was a populist. He was also
Speaker 3: a Democrat. Brian was concerned with, for example, enlarging the
Speaker 3: country's money supply with free silver. Roosevelt's on the East coast,
Speaker 3: it's the gold Stan and all the way. And so
Speaker 3: O'Brien represents two conservatives. And we were talking earlier about
Speaker 3: you know, sometimes Rooselt's progressive and sometimes he's a conservative.
Speaker 3: He was bearing a conservative on Brian, who he thought
Speaker 3: was just you know, this kind of you know, was
Speaker 3: going to make the French Revolution happen in America, was
Speaker 3: going to attack the money supply, and and representing a group,
Speaker 3: you know, American farmers who Roosevelt respected but did not
Speaker 3: really take seriously as as being a part of part
Speaker 3: of the ruling class. They had their place, they should vote,
Speaker 3: and they should love like like Roosevelt. I wonder if
Speaker 3: Roosevelt also, you know, we think of Roosevelt being so young,
Speaker 3: the youngest American president, Brian was actually just a little
Speaker 3: bit younger. He was the boy orator. I always wondering
Speaker 3: if there was a part of Roosevelt. It was vaguely
Speaker 3: jealous that Roosevelt didn't have a great speaking voice, could
Speaker 3: get a good speech, great speaking voice, and here's Brian
Speaker 3: just wonderful. He would have been on radio at a
Speaker 3: different time or television and really give a speech, if
Speaker 3: you know Brian's because this cross of gold speech you gave,
Speaker 3: there was at a little bit of jealousy that here was
Speaker 3: this younger man who had these qualities that he aspired
Speaker 3: to have himself.
Speaker 1: You know, by the way, I'm really taken with the
Speaker 1: cover of your book because of the it feels like
Speaker 1: an authentic photo.
Speaker 2: I'm assuming it's not in that it's colorized. It is colorist, right,
Speaker 2: but it has this just wonderful right.
Speaker 1: And you just brought up something that I think is
Speaker 1: you know, one of the things I like to say is,
Speaker 1: you know about certain people that run for president in
Speaker 1: the modern era, boy, they'd have made a great nineteenth
Speaker 1: century president, meaning when you didn't need this sort of
Speaker 1: public oratory or the public charisma. And here's Teddy Roosevelt
Speaker 1: thought of it as this incredibly charismatic president, larger than
Speaker 1: life figure. Would he have been an nobody in the
Speaker 1: TV the TV era?
Speaker 3: Oh, you know, it's hard to answer because I'm not
Speaker 3: sure how the charisma translates. RW again, didn't have a
Speaker 3: great projecting voice, the ponds neck glasses, I'm not sure
Speaker 3: about that. Wasn't a particularly tall man. And sometimes you
Speaker 3: you kind of look back at those photographs and you
Speaker 3: see him as a forty year old officer in the
Speaker 3: Spanish American War, and he just doesn't maybe maybe look like,
Speaker 3: I don't know, Douglas MacArthur, you know, with.
Speaker 2: No, he doesn't that right, Yeah, the square jo.
Speaker 3: So so it is it is a real question. Uh,
Speaker 3: And I guess to answer your question, I don't know
Speaker 3: if that, if all that would have translated particularly well.
Speaker 3: He was very well read, He was a thoughtful man.
Speaker 3: He was an intellectual one. Is America ever been in
Speaker 3: love with people who have demonstrated intellectual qualities? Uh, that's
Speaker 3: pretty tough to come up with. It's possible, though, that
Speaker 3: his argumentative skills and debates would have caught people's eye.
Speaker 3: It's also possible that because people who went to see
Speaker 3: him live they said, wow, you know, there's.
Speaker 2: Good always really good reactions, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: There were there were good reactions there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I wouldn't I wouldn't count him out.
Speaker 1: One of the other points you make that I thought,
Speaker 1: frankly it was one of those I'm my boy, there's
Speaker 1: a whole book in here was the how Roosevelt's presidency
Speaker 1: was sort of the first one you know, Lincoln challenged
Speaker 1: the supremacy of Congress for obvious reasons during the Civil War.
Speaker 1: But the but the sort of the strong presidency versus
Speaker 1: the strong legislative branch. You know, the last time there
Speaker 1: was big fights like that was you had to go
Speaker 1: back to Andrew Jackson, and you were sort of painting
Speaker 1: a picture that Roosevelt in many ways was, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of certainly in the twentieth century, and now in hindsight,
Speaker 1: looks like he laid the groundwork for a strong the
Speaker 1: strong executive that we're now used to today. And in
Speaker 1: many ways he epitomized this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, go ahead, Yeah, it.
Speaker 3: Was semichael an imperial presidency, and it.
Speaker 1: Was the big the what realistically really kind of in
Speaker 1: hindsight now the first of its kind, right.
Speaker 3: And I think I think what makes it unique is
Speaker 3: that you mentioned you mentioned Andrew Jackson back in the day,
Speaker 3: and even Lincoln a little bit later, nobody really had
Speaker 3: the kind of force and power that Roosevelt had. The
Speaker 3: country had obviously grown great development, including industrial development, and
Speaker 3: so Jackson and Lincoln were primarily presidents of groaring republics,
Speaker 3: and Roosevelt was a president of a country tree that
Speaker 3: was industrializing, and that was urbanizing. We just become an
Speaker 3: overseas imperial power. And that means that how the presidency
Speaker 3: is also going to increase. There's more resources, there's a
Speaker 3: bigger military, there's more money available. And this can give
Speaker 3: someone who's interested and not necessarily expand the part of
Speaker 3: the presidency just to do it, or to challenge the constitution,
Speaker 3: but to project, say his vision about what America should
Speaker 3: look like, or the fruition of America. If you don't
Speaker 3: have a real strong congress or court system, then with
Speaker 3: those advantages, that president can really push things. And it
Speaker 3: doesn't come just with the times. The individual is also important,
Speaker 3: because we don't talk about McKinley that way. We don't
Speaker 3: talk about William Howard Taff that way, and if we
Speaker 3: talk about Wilson that way, Wilson came from a southern state,
Speaker 3: troits tradition would allow Wilson to and some wadys expand
Speaker 3: the power of the presidency. Not unlike Lincoln. He was
Speaker 3: involved in a great war.
Speaker 1: Right, you point out something, and I remember this being
Speaker 1: I remember reading something about Bill Clinton feeling this way
Speaker 1: after nine to eleven, that he lamented that his presidency
Speaker 1: was too peaceful and too prosperous, right, Like he didn't
Speaker 1: he didn't have a moment where he could have made history, right.
Speaker 1: You know, there's always the debate, right, do the men
Speaker 1: make the history or just the history make the men
Speaker 1: right type of thing. And you write something similar about
Speaker 1: Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt that there was a jealousy
Speaker 1: of sorts that Wilson, you know that he didn't get
Speaker 1: a chance to lead. But here's the thing, Like he
Speaker 1: ran for president in nineteen twelve. You know he could
Speaker 1: get elected in nineteen twelve and in theory have been
Speaker 1: president during World War One. Give you know, I'm a
Speaker 1: big fan of alternative histories. That's a that's a sliding door,
Speaker 1: that's not unrealistic. Teddy Roosevelt as president at the start
Speaker 1: of the Great War, does America get in sooner or later?
Speaker 1: Or is it just different rhetoric but same same basic result.
Speaker 3: I think that he begins to arm the country in
Speaker 3: a percadials campaign. I would guess pretty much right away,
Speaker 3: like in late nineteen fourteen, whereas the Wilson administration waited
Speaker 3: until he's say hunting right, And I think unless the
Speaker 3: Germans had sort of pulled back on unrestricted summon warfare.
Speaker 3: I mean they did, but then by nineteen seventeen they
Speaker 3: they put it back in play. I think Roosevelt I
Speaker 3: could see Roosevelt administration going to war in nineteen fifteen
Speaker 3: unless the German government recognized this guy's real serious, this
Speaker 3: guy will do it, and then completely, you know, leaving
Speaker 3: Americans alone. And then I wonder in that context if
Speaker 3: Roosevelt would have found ways too, for example, aid the Allies,
Speaker 3: even with the United States wasn't part of the Allied cause,
Speaker 3: of course you could do so saying we're neutral country
Speaker 3: and we can trade with who we want to. In
Speaker 3: that sense, it would not have been much different than
Speaker 3: occurred under Wilson's presidency, which is that billions went to
Speaker 3: the Allies and millions went to the Germans. But I
Speaker 3: think we would have been in the war earlier.
Speaker 1: That's my initial instinct when even asking you the question,
Speaker 1: was I assume he gets us in earlier.
Speaker 2: Is it you know?
Speaker 1: Do you know does the groundwork for the United Nations
Speaker 1: get laid if there's a Roosevelt presidency in the teens
Speaker 1: rather than a Wilson presidency.
Speaker 3: You know, it's possible because Roosevelt really came to loathe Wilson,
Speaker 3: and so anything that Wilson proposed, Roosevelt was going to
Speaker 3: are you againsting He.
Speaker 1: Wasn't alone among conservatives both of that era and of
Speaker 1: today when it comes to Wilson.
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 3: And so when when Wilson proposes the League of Nations,
Speaker 3: tr really attacks.
Speaker 2: It, of course, right, But one can.
Speaker 3: Imagine that that Roosevelt would have loved to have had
Speaker 3: the world stage, and if he had been in power,
Speaker 3: one could easily imagine that he would have made some
Speaker 3: proposal for this great, huge crusade which is world peace. Well, actually,
Speaker 3: you know, that's sort of what Wilson was asking for
Speaker 3: the war to end all wars. One can imagine Roosevelt's
Speaker 3: sort of adopting like rhetorick and the like mission. I
Speaker 3: can't remember who it was, but the research one of
Speaker 3: contemporaries said the other thing that really bothered Roosevelt was
Speaker 3: that Wilson was doing things that that Rooselt would have
Speaker 3: loved to have done, including including go to Congress and
Speaker 3: give the Stay of the Union address, which which was
Speaker 3: just like habitually just sort of like delivered this this
Speaker 3: big long paper and now here's Wilson going to Congress
Speaker 3: and delivering it. And of course you know, now once
Speaker 3: a year that's what we do. We sit around our
Speaker 3: TVs and whatnot, and we've watched rallies depending upon office,
Speaker 3: and I think not unlike Roosevelt's relationship to Brian, there
Speaker 3: was a little bit of jealousy in Roosevelt's reaction and
Speaker 3: some criticism to Wilson.
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Speaker 1: I think the presidency had a chance to sort of
Speaker 1: dominate Congress's Congress was pretty evenly divided. That was another
Speaker 1: mark of similarity between the era we live in now
Speaker 1: in the air then, is that we were in the
Speaker 1: middle of a political realignment. Back then, we just didn't
Speaker 1: fully realize that. You know, that's the beauty of historians
Speaker 1: like yourself, Right, you can oh, well, that was the
Speaker 1: middle of a political realignment. Well at the moment, people
Speaker 1: didn't realize it. Right, I always say that about the
Speaker 1: moment we're living in. I'm like, you know, we think
Speaker 1: every election is this permanent you know picture of a coalition.
Speaker 1: I mean I watched these people going the Trump coalition.
Speaker 1: It's like, Okay, on one day, Trump had these voters
Speaker 1: and there's a whole bunch of.
Speaker 2: People that literally the next day might not have voted
Speaker 2: that way.
Speaker 1: Like, this is a more fluid situation than we give
Speaker 1: it credit for. But as you went through in writing
Speaker 1: this book, you know, how much did it echo with
Speaker 1: the current era? In your mind as you were writing.
Speaker 3: You know, I think back to nineteen hundred and nineteen five,
Speaker 3: anxiety about where the country's moving, anxiety about forign policy.
Speaker 3: We were just entering a phase where we were going
Speaker 3: to become an imperial power, which seemed to contradict our history, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, the United States was born in a great
Speaker 3: anti colonial rebellion. We identified ourselves as the world's leader
Speaker 3: against colonization. And now with the war against Spain, you know,
Speaker 3: there's Hawaii, there's the Philippines.
Speaker 1: There's suddenly acquiring territory. And this was quite a This
Speaker 1: was a something we hadn't really done since Mexico, I
Speaker 1: guess exactly.
Speaker 3: And then you know, I'm thinking, you know, we're industrializing,
Speaker 3: there's monopolies, there's a need for reform. This would become
Speaker 3: the progressive era. There's the populist Party. These farmers in
Speaker 3: the frontier, hitherto the bone and sinew, the backbone of
Speaker 3: the country. The here's the textbooks, the agrarians. If you
Speaker 3: were a president back in their own republic and you
Speaker 3: were listing what you did for a living, you would
Speaker 3: check I was a farmer. Of course, farmers are are
Speaker 3: the best people. So the American identity is undergoing a
Speaker 3: great change. Some people would argue of last twenty five
Speaker 3: years or so from policy AI dot com billionaires, the
Speaker 3: American identity is undergoing a great change, and so in
Speaker 3: times of uncertainty, one might rebel against the existing structure.
Speaker 3: In nineteen you know, term the century, it wasn't that
Speaker 3: that people dumped the Republican Party, but in a sense
Speaker 3: and latched on under Roosevelt. They latched onto a maverick
Speaker 3: within the party who was never within the good graces
Speaker 3: of the party's old guard. One could say that Trump
Speaker 3: is a transactional Republican and was quite willing to go
Speaker 3: his own way. So he said maybe in twenty sixteen
Speaker 3: and run a third party candidcy, which is what Rooseveldt did,
Speaker 3: And so the party sort of, you know, went with
Speaker 3: him whenever he was in power. And when Roosevelt was
Speaker 3: in power, the old guard went with him too. But
Speaker 3: when Roosevelt left, they quickly moved on to Taft.
Speaker 1: So what's the lesson there, because that's fascinating to me too,
Speaker 1: And I feel like the McKinley wing of the party
Speaker 1: took back control of the party by nineteen twenty right,
Speaker 1: and Harding and Coolidge were really more Republicans in the
Speaker 1: style of your McKinley's or your Tafts less So a
Speaker 1: Roosevelt is that is that foreshadowing what we should expect
Speaker 1: inside this Publican party as they move forward post Rum.
Speaker 3: It's hard to say, because on one hand, there's just there's
Speaker 3: just politics, right, sure, and so and so even even
Speaker 3: if I'm the old guard, you know, and we look
Speaker 3: like we've got control this year, there's there's there's elections coming,
Speaker 3: and if you want to stand power, you have to
Speaker 3: win elections. And so, on one hand, it would be
Speaker 3: easy to say, yeah, I can imagine that. Uh you know,
Speaker 3: when when when Thrumbs gone the cult to Christma, that's
Speaker 3: there that that the Republican Party is going to look
Speaker 3: quite a bit different. Maybe so perhaps, But on another hand,
Speaker 3: you have to win elections, and so what are the
Speaker 3: voters pushing for? What are the voters demanding? And in
Speaker 3: nineteen twenties, you know, even though farmers had are difficult,
Speaker 3: there was a booming stock market. The standard living kept increasing,
Speaker 3: and so there were Republicans who who might you know,
Speaker 3: in their library have a couple of books by rosewant
Speaker 3: say Roosevelt. It's great, Roosevelt's my hero, and I I'm
Speaker 3: supporting the results because I'm voting for Republicans. But really
Speaker 3: they might be supporting a Republican party that was antithetical
Speaker 3: to Roosevelt. They can't necessarily see the difference because it's
Speaker 3: party labels. They're voting the pocketbook. They feel good.
Speaker 2: About this.
Speaker 3: With us, It's not exactly clear where some of these
Speaker 3: Republican voters might go after Trump, and that depends upon
Speaker 3: all kinds of things, the future of the economy, the
Speaker 3: future of how the things that been happening the last year.
Speaker 3: So i'll jart in playouts. This year we have elections,
Speaker 3: and in three years and moving forward. So wow, it's
Speaker 3: a steal. It's a hard question to answer.
Speaker 1: Well, I'd like to actually spend the next five or
Speaker 1: so minutes here as we wrap up, talking about another
Speaker 1: book you wrote, which has to do with moderates. It's
Speaker 1: called The Vital Center of American Politics from the Founding
Speaker 1: to Today. And I look at these two books, right
Speaker 1: wrote about Teddy and he wrote that book, and it
Speaker 1: tells me you sort of which is why, frankly, I
Speaker 1: was why I wanted you on, because I sort of
Speaker 1: I always say I'm not a liberal or conservative. I'm
Speaker 1: an incrementalist, and that I'm a believer that ultimately, like
Speaker 1: you know, we have you know, whenever we incrementally move,
Speaker 1: it's on solid footing. It takes you know, and it's incremental. Right,
Speaker 1: So security is the best example of incrementalism that over
Speaker 1: time takes root and then it becomes something something more
Speaker 1: permanent to many people.
Speaker 2: When you view the.
Speaker 1: Center of American politics, do you view it in terms
Speaker 1: of the middle ground between left and right or do
Speaker 1: you view it more in terms of how I describe,
Speaker 1: which is it's not whether I have some views I'm
Speaker 1: very progressive, some views I'm very conservative, but ultimately I
Speaker 1: come down as an incrementalist. Some might call that a pragmatist.
Speaker 1: However you want to view it. What do you view
Speaker 1: as the center of American politics? Is it ideological or
Speaker 1: is it really more about how you practice politics?
Speaker 3: Let me tell you practice politics. You could be you know,
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, to be a Democrat in nineteen
Speaker 3: thirty five, it's much different than to be a Democrat
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty five. And the party's origins are actually
Speaker 3: I think the protection the institution slavery are these forms
Speaker 3: in the seventeen nineties, principally by the efforts of Jefferson
Speaker 3: and Madison. For parties to be successful, they have to
Speaker 3: attract coalitions and people, and so that's where I think
Speaker 3: of moderation, That's where I think of connecting with voters
Speaker 3: and if you're too far on the right. I think,
Speaker 3: if you're too far on the left, you're not gonna
Speaker 3: be able to do that effectively. You'll have your hardcore,
Speaker 3: you know, enough to lose elections respectively. But that's not
Speaker 3: the name of the game. And so you know, when i'
Speaker 3: I think of the two major parties and I look
Speaker 3: at some of the rhetoric, I can usually find some
Speaker 3: appeal at a center, and sometimes it's a big appeal,
Speaker 3: and sometimes maybe now, for example, it's not such a
Speaker 3: big appeal. And when I don't see the appeal to
Speaker 3: the center, that gives them suggestion that that party may
Speaker 3: not be very successful.
Speaker 1: And the next select you know, I answer this question
Speaker 1: people are I had a student in a class I
Speaker 1: teach currently was asking me why the Democrats come across
Speaker 1: as mushier than the Republicans, And to me, it's a
Speaker 1: matt I always say, well, there's your answer is a
Speaker 1: mathic problem, meaning there are more base Republicans and based Democrats,
Speaker 1: and so the path to fifty percent plus one for
Speaker 1: a Republican allows them to be more conservative than the
Speaker 1: path to fifty percent plus one. And this is generic.
Speaker 1: You know, in certain places it's blue and you can.
Speaker 1: You can do this, but the Democrats need more of
Speaker 1: these moderates to get to fifty percent plus one. By
Speaker 1: the way, this was reversed right when you and I
Speaker 1: were growing up in the sixty seventies and eighties.
Speaker 2: You could argue it the other way.
Speaker 1: The Republicans right where they considered more of the centrist party,
Speaker 1: well they didn't. They had a smaller base. The Democrats
Speaker 1: at the larger base, so the Democrats didn't have to
Speaker 1: you know it always I always was trying to tell
Speaker 1: the student, Look, it's just a numbers game.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Parties aren't centrists because they want to be Parties reach
Speaker 1: out to the center out of necessity, right, not out
Speaker 1: of so in looking at that, there's clearly a vacuum, right,
Speaker 1: there's a We always say there's this vast middle of
Speaker 1: America in some of us want to believe it's between
Speaker 1: the thirty yard lines.
Speaker 2: Is it is that correct?
Speaker 1: Or how should we describe the vast moderate center of
Speaker 1: the American electorate?
Speaker 3: You know, I think that's one of the great narratives
Speaker 3: that's been out there for at least the last half century.
Speaker 3: I think back, for example, to Richard Nixon, the forgotten American.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it's it's it's about recognizing you can't reach
Speaker 3: these people unless you recognize that they're there, that that
Speaker 3: they're not going to automatically vote for you, automatically not
Speaker 3: vote for you. And so I I, you know, I
Speaker 3: look at the hardcore voters on both sides and what
Speaker 3: always interests me though, is that who's available, who is
Speaker 3: in play, And it seems to me that that's that's
Speaker 3: who you need to go after. That that, to me,
Speaker 3: that's that's the art of politics, which is which is
Speaker 3: building coalitions, big tents. And you obviously have to do
Speaker 3: this because if you if you're in a country our
Speaker 3: size and you only have two major parties, well.
Speaker 1: I think that's the flawed our system right there, is
Speaker 1: that we're trying. Can you imagine going to a clothing
Speaker 1: store and they're only being small and extra large, And
Speaker 1: that's what we've done to you know. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think people sit there and say, yeah, I'm registered
Speaker 1: as a Republican, but the Republicans don't represent everything I believe,
Speaker 1: Or I'm registered as a Democrat, but the Democrats don't
Speaker 1: represent everything I believe. That if we had, you know,
Speaker 1: if we had more parties and no majority, and no
Speaker 1: party had to get a majority to get power, but
Speaker 1: you had to form a coalition. I mean, in some ways,
Speaker 1: I always say, both parties are coalitions. Are not parties,
Speaker 1: They're coalitions of multiple sub parties. Right, there's a there's
Speaker 1: a Christian Conservative party, there's a business party. Right all
Speaker 1: on the right, there's a progressive you know, you could
Speaker 1: put together your different pieces of each you know, basically
Speaker 1: multiple political parties within this umbrella group called.
Speaker 2: The left and the right.
Speaker 1: You know, look, I will I will admit, well, I
Speaker 1: don't want us to be a parliamentary system. I do
Speaker 1: wish we had a system that allowed for parties to
Speaker 1: be more representative of where people wanted to be. But
Speaker 1: you but you had sort of top four, right, we
Speaker 1: had four major We're really I think we're really four
Speaker 1: major political parties stuffed into two.
Speaker 3: Interesting. Yeah, well it's it's obviously it's a very diverse country.
Speaker 3: And I think some of the difficulty in going after
Speaker 3: the center is you don't want to alienate certain coalitions within.
Speaker 2: Your coaches.
Speaker 3: And and uh, obviously if you do that, there's there's
Speaker 3: there's the fear of alienation. But you know, there's also
Speaker 3: the question of do you want to government from fear?
Speaker 3: Do you want to do you want to try to
Speaker 3: gain things all the time. So if I could do
Speaker 3: in one more result reference and this guy really was
Speaker 3: a romantic and he wasn't thinking about, you know, sort
Speaker 3: of electoral votes, and he wasn't counting. He was really
Speaker 3: leading from his heart. And maybe this is romantic than
Speaker 3: to say, but I think if we had more of that,
Speaker 3: I think voters would really resonate to someone who they
Speaker 3: thought was speaking directly to them, was mostly sincere and
Speaker 3: believed that we all had something in stake together. It
Speaker 3: wasn't Jovis reading spreadsheets.
Speaker 1: As a historian who's a president, we don't have enough
Speaker 1: scholarship on that. You wish people would spend more time
Speaker 1: getting to know deserves the better biography treatment. You know,
Speaker 1: I used to say I felt like Eisenhower was under scholarship,
Speaker 1: and that's changed. I'd argain in the last twenty years
Speaker 1: we've gotten the proper what I think is a proper
Speaker 1: amount of historians tackling him in different ways, which feel
Speaker 1: there's some people that are overwritten about, like Kennedy, And I.
Speaker 2: Say this with no disrespect.
Speaker 1: They just you know, I get why, what does it
Speaker 1: because of the circumstances of his death. But I'm curious
Speaker 1: because I still actually think there are more things to
Speaker 1: learn about Teddy. So I'm not saying this to say, hey,
Speaker 1: we've you know, we've had too much on Teddy. Don't agree.
Speaker 1: I think not enough sometimes still there. But who's somebody
Speaker 1: that he thinks a bit under represented in your ranks
Speaker 1: of the historians? Now you like to see tackled.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I net sure to see some aspects of James
Speaker 3: Munroe's presidency looked at more carefully. So this is kind
Speaker 3: of going way back. But you know, he was the
Speaker 3: last president to here knee breeches, and so we're really
Speaker 3: moving from.
Speaker 1: You use that phrase, and can I make a confession.
Speaker 1: When you use the phrase the first time, I'm like,
Speaker 1: what the hell are knee bridges? So I literally the
Speaker 1: old I hadn't done this in a while where I
Speaker 1: did the old? Okay, I gotta I gotta go look
Speaker 1: up what that is. You know, you know when as
Speaker 1: a kid, you know you're reading books that are a
Speaker 1: little ahead of your time, you're constantly doing that.
Speaker 3: I had done that.
Speaker 2: I was like Neighbridge. Oh knee britches, got it? Okay?
Speaker 3: Sorry, so very eighteenth century.
Speaker 2: Yes, it is.
Speaker 3: Simun wrote as this transitional figure, right, I mean he
Speaker 3: was a founder, he was it was neighbors.
Speaker 1: He was the last founder president, right, I would say so, yeah.
Speaker 3: John Quincy Adams follows him. But John Quincy Adams was
Speaker 3: a bored in the revolution, right, And we're moving into
Speaker 3: what would be called machine politics, and Monroe sort of
Speaker 3: resisted that. Monroe wanted to push what he once called
Speaker 3: amalgamation politics, which is we need to go back to
Speaker 3: where there are no parties. There's just essentially, you know,
Speaker 3: Americans in governments and we're not federalists and we're not
Speaker 3: we're not republicans. We're just all in this together, which
Speaker 3: which looks so antiquated by that time, it's just blown
Speaker 3: out the waters in eighteen twenties. But I'm interested in
Speaker 3: the intellectual history that's there, his readings of you know,
Speaker 3: a Thinian democracy in the Roman Republic, and you know,
Speaker 3: he was the last chief executive to essentially run you know,
Speaker 3: all by himself. There was there was no one opposed
Speaker 3: to him. So there really was that moment of what
Speaker 3: do you call it moderation or the center or consensus
Speaker 3: that we could we could we could as a country
Speaker 3: say yeah, you know, we're essentially behind this person. It
Speaker 3: doesn't last.
Speaker 1: It's interesting, you know Lincoln has that now, but he
Speaker 1: never had it in practice. Right, what's that meaning that
Speaker 1: what you just described that Monroe had this sort of Hey,
Speaker 1: he's representative of all of us.
Speaker 2: Well, that's right.
Speaker 1: In hindsight, we've decided Lincoln is is an avatar for
Speaker 1: the for who we want America to have been in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, and it wasn't what America was, but
Speaker 1: he's the avatar of what we could be.
Speaker 2: Right, he's America.
Speaker 1: I think FDR is pretty close to achieving that status. Eisenhower,
Speaker 1: I think has that status. But there's not many presidents
Speaker 1: that have that status.
Speaker 3: No, there isn't. Oftentimes it's it's chief executives who are
Speaker 3: associated in some way, shape or form with wars. With sure,
Speaker 3: with America's more popular wars, more necessary wars, and so
Speaker 3: that loves off.
Speaker 1: You made a great case for James Monroe America at
Speaker 1: two fifty. How should the average citizens celebrate.
Speaker 3: Part of their country cognizance of are our successes cognizance
Speaker 3: of our failures, and to love and respect our country
Speaker 3: enough to to look at it wholly and clearly as
Speaker 3: as best we can, and to to do what we
Speaker 3: can to be good, productive, honest, deliberate, considerate citizens.
Speaker 1: Well, David, I enjoyed it. Uh, you know, look, I'm
Speaker 1: an easy mark. I enjoyed Teddy Roosevelt books.
Speaker 2: But look, you.
Speaker 1: The best history books to read are the ones that
Speaker 1: make you feel like they echo in the moment we're
Speaker 1: currently living in. And I would say that you've you've
Speaker 1: You've done a good job of trying to capture you know,
Speaker 1: I think that's a plus side of a history book,
Speaker 1: right is when it can also it's writing about the past,
Speaker 1: but it's writing about the present.
Speaker 3: Well, thanks, You know, the historian is objective as objective
Speaker 3: can be. Use this.
Speaker 1: You're you're gonna get You're going to get influenced by
Speaker 1: the times you're living in.
Speaker 2: It's just inevitable, right exactly.
Speaker 3: The history is living is living through the times.
Speaker 1: Well, we need a lot more historians as journalists these days.
Speaker 1: I feel like context and nuances falls off too much.
Speaker 1: So I'm glad to surface this, and.
Speaker 2: Well done. It's great to get to know you Dad.
Speaker 3: Thanks, check,