Presidents from Abe Lincoln to Silent Cal

David Fisher returns to American POTUS to discuss his latest additions to his terrific Presidential Chronicles series.  This time we talk about presidents from the Great Emancipator to Silent Cal.

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Transcript

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Thanks for joining us on American POTUS, a podcast devoted to the history of presidents and the presidency. We're joined by the best experts from around the globe giving us new perspectives on the history of this office and those who've held it. Make sure you follow American POTUS and please consider supporting our work at AmericanPOTUS. org. We are a 501c3. I hope you enjoy today's episode. welcome to American POTUS. Today, we have returning to the podcast, our good friend, David Fisher. to talk about the continuation of his terrific Presidential Chronicles series. David has held many positions in his career, everything from radio sportscaster, risk management specialist, and leadership roles in the Department of Defense and other government agencies. But most importantly, he's a real fan of and expert about presidential history. Today he'll talk with us about volumes four, five, and six of his Presidential Chronicles. David, Scott and I welcome you back to American POTUS. Hi, it's great to be back with you guys. Always a pleasure to talk about my favorite topic and your favorite topic as well. So it's a pleasure. It's always good to meet a fellow fan of the presidency and I enjoyed the presidential chronicles again. You know, you start this one with my favorite president in volume four talking about Abraham Lincoln and I've always been amazed at his rise from real poverty on the frontier to being the man we know The Great Emancipator. So when you were doing your research for Presidential Chronicles what personal and political traits did you find that Abe had that maybe help explain his remarkable success and his remarkable rise from near to nothing on the frontier? It really is this remarkable only in America kind of story for somebody on the frontier to, with really basically no formal education. He teaches himself, becomes a lawyer, becomes a politician. There were some personal characteristics of Lincoln that just set him apart. The one is his ability to communicate. He would tell stories in a way that were, Funny, entertaining, but also thought provoking. They typically had a moral component to them. When he was riding the circuit as a lawyer, you didn't want to miss out. If he was going to be in the dining room that day, you wanted to be here to hear his stories. And his effectiveness as a storyteller, Really carry through his whole political career and really made a difference with the other characteristic, which really is moral courage. He had the moral courage to take on the issue that had challenged the United States really since the beginning. This question of slavery, and he put it in very sort of moralistic terms. He really comes out in the open after the Kansas Nebraska Act and bleeding Kansas in the 1850s. And in those debates with Stephen Douglas, running for the Senate in Illinois in 1858, he paints this picture, this again moralistic picture about slavery. Very simply, we think it's wrong, you think it's right. You know, linking it to the Declaration of Independence and all men are created equal in terms that sort of anybody in that audience could really relate to. And it's really compelling, particularly to the North. We also have to remember Lincoln was the most divisive president we've ever had. Obviously not a single vote in the South for him for the presidency. And so it's an interesting dichotomy in terms of how the country looked at him. But his ability to grasp the key issue of the day. With the moral courage to take it on in his speeches, not only there, but he goes to New York, the Cooper Union speeches are so important for him to get on the radar of the Republicans in the East. And again, in that in his own witty folksy way. He tells these stories in a way that's extremely compelling. Yes. The other thing I would say about his success I actually was up at, James Buchanan's home in Wheatland, not that long ago and gave a talk there that C SPAN just picked up, about the presidents around the Civil War and how the three preceding presidents From Fillmore to Pierce to Buchanan basically were very strict rule constructionists And frankly that model wasn't working. Well as the country was fracturing Lincoln was the end justifies the means here in a very good way. He was going to do whatever it took. He really wasn't going to be bound by the Supreme Court or Congress or almost anything or anybody to preserve the union. And by 1863 to also free the slaves. And he was going to do again, that sort of courage, courageous approach, whatever it took. It was part of his personality that came through as president. Again, that could be dangerous in the hands of a president, but in terms of Lincoln, at that time, he accomplished the two greatest outcomes in presidential history. He preserved the Union, he freed the slaves, and those personal characteristics, I think, had a lot to do with him getting elected and being successful in the presidency. Absolutely, I fully agree, and we were very lucky to have him when we had him, that's for sure. One, one, successor of Lincoln's who didn't always get his due, and now, today is getting reevaluated by many is Ulysses Grant. And I know we've had a few guests on here talking about Ulysses and in a much more positive light for his presidency than we've often heard before. So what did you find in your research for Presidential Chronicles that would, Support or not support that, that perhaps more positive analysis we're hearing now. Yeah, at the time that Grant died, so right around the turn of the century, at the end of the 19th century, he was still very popular. And then he dies, and the narrative is lost. You know, a lot of the southern historians, Are telling a story, taking sort of the same facts, but turning them upside down to really paint Grant in a very negative light. You know, he was the butcher as a general who was just throwing people needlessly into the breach to be killed. And he was a dictator and a corrupt leader as president. And this was a narrative that took on and his view and the public and historians was, was really, really low for, I don't know, 50, 60, 70 years. Sure. Well, I think a lot of that stuff we've realized is really quite much nonsense. There were, I think, a couple of things for Grant that show him to be an extremely important and effective president, and one element that maybe not so much. So again, we look at things from all sides. On the positive side, look, he took a really strong stand at a difficult issue with the economy. You know, it was this recession, 1873. That grant oversaw and coming out of that, the U S is in big debt still from the civil war, and there's a big push to print more greenbacks, not to go to the gold standard, basically embrace inflation. The law was actually called the inflation act and grant was lobbied really hard by Republicans, his own party to sign this thing. And he actually is ready to sign it. He wrote later that I actually didn't believe my own words. So I decided to veto it. And that veto was really important because it put us back on the path to getting back on the stable currency and the gold standard, because then they passed the specie resumption act. And your grant actually saw this as the most important thing he did as president. These two economic decisions about the inflation act and the specie reduction act really were. Critical sort of to the foundational element of the country at a time when again, we could be spiraling with inflation and debt. He really tried to put a stop to that. I think he gets a lot of credit for that. The other thing he of course gets even more credit for in my mind is the fact that he's really our only reconstruction president. He's really the only one after Lincoln dies. I don't know. Maybe until Truman and Johnson come along in the twentieth century. To really do something about the rights of blacks in the South, the freed men who, and this was very personal to Grant. I mean, he had fought a war over these issues and he didn't just talk the talk. He not only used the military. He used the courts. He founded the position of solicitor General. It's the first solicitor general we had. And that job at that solicitor general was to go prosecute offenders of the 14th and 15th amendment in the south. And he went after, I think, like a thousand indictments in one year, like 3000 the next year. It's very aggressive in trying to maintain the right to vote, due process, equal protection. Now, it fades a bit in the end of Grant's term, in part because the Supreme Court isn't a lot of help here. They made a couple of decisions that really backed off the power of the 14th and 15th amendments. And of course, there's some apathy that's growing in the North as well. So it became more difficult to sustain. But he's the only one who even tried. And he really did try by using the legal methods at his disposal. And I think, again, he gets enormous credit for that on the flip side, there is this charge of corruption in the grant administration, and I always go into these stories and I'm trying to learn about corruption. Oh, is this real? And is the president a part of it? Or is these things overblown? Because a lot of times these scandal things can be overblown. With Grant four cabinet secretaries resigned, basically because of bribes or kickbacks. And these were important jobs. The Attorney General, Secretary of War, Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of the Interior. There were the whiskey rings, the tax evasion that was going on. And those were people, former generals, that he knew and put into those roles that were caught up in a lot of these scams. very much. It's more than any president that I've studied of the 32 that I've studied so far. There really is more of that kind of malfeasance in the cabinet than anybody I've seen. Now, some make the argument, well, that may be true, but Grant was not personally involved in those. And as far as those were concerned, I think that's generally true. But if you really look at Grant, he took a lot of gifts after the Civil War, before he becomes president. Like, three houses in different cities were gifted to him. Just before he becomes president, he actually sells his house in Washington DC for double the value, which again was sort of a gift to someone that he then nominates to be secretary of the treasury, even though that person was not eligible to be secretary of the treasury and was rejected by the Senate. So, was he a corrupt guy? You know, you want to think, really, no. I mean, there's a lot of moral courage associated with Grant as well. And he did some really good things. Again, talked about the economy and reconstruction. But boy, I can't get away a little bit from the taint on some of the corruption stuff just because there was so much of it under his watch. I recently taught a one day course for Rhone State Community College, here in Tennessee, and, and they wanted me to talk about Ulysses Grant, you can tell those really good stories and important stories that people have often overlooked, but then you get to the scandals, and it is a long list, as you said, a long list of scandals. I think also, it's amazing, you talked about his good economic work. On a national scale, he could do that, but boy, was he horrible with his own money. Just horrible. Right, right. Absolutely terrible. Oh my goodness. Both early in his life and late in his life, which is really quite sad. Everywhere you turn around, he's always losing everything. So let's turn to a president that's not as well known, and that's James Garfield. And of course, that's because he was in office, what, about seven months before he was assassinated. But given that short term, did you find anything in your research that would say here is a lasting legacy of James Garfield as president? So as president, I'd actually say basically, no, I mean, as you said, he was president for 200 days. The first 120 days were miserable. He was fighting the patronage wars between his secretary of state, James Blaine and Roscoe Conkling in the Senate. It's almost comical. You read the back and forth between these guys in terms of, you know, I need this patronage. I need that. It was just miserable for Garfield. Then he gets shot. And he spends 80 days in agony before he finally succumbs to his wounds. Of his adult life, the 200 days that I just talked about are probably the worst 200 days of his entire life. The legacy, though, for James Garfield is everything else. As I talk about in my version of his story, I talk about the Horatio Alger myth. So Horatio Alger was an author, he wrote fiction in the Gilded Age and all of his stories were dozens and dozens of these geared toward young men. And were these stories of the American dream where somebody starts out in poverty, maybe gets a little bit of luck from somewhere or something, gets an education, works harder than anyone else and lives the American dream ultimately as a success story. And it's all fiction it's this only in America kind of story, and Horatio Alger sells tons and tons of these books. The first non fiction book that Horatio Alger ever wrote was a biography of James Garfield. And in part, because he lived the Horatio Alger myth. He was the embodiment of it. I mean, he started out, again, we talk about the poorest of the poor, A one bedroom log cabin with three windows, dirt floor, till he's ten years old. He's living in this with his mother and his brother and his sister, doesn't have shoes until he's four years old, but he gets a little bit of a break. He has an uncle who helps him go off to school. He has to get a lot of odd jobs because he has no money. He works harder than anyone else in school. He does well. He eventually gets to Williams College, a top school in the east. Comes back to Ohio where he becomes a principal at the school that he had gone to. He goes into the military in the Civil War as a colonel. Actually risks his life on two extremely heroic instances where he is out there basically saving the lives of many other people. Garfield in the Civil War comes in as a colonel, and he's really quite heroic. There's a couple of instances where he basically puts his life on the line to go save, Very large groups of folks who are stranded behind enemy lines and he's quite successful there. Eventually, he then runs for Congress, becomes a leader in Congress, wins a seat in the Senate, becomes President of the United States, is a dark horse. That's The Horatio Alger myth. That's the American dream. And I think that's the real legacy of the only in America kind of story of a James Garfield and then forget the 200 awful days when he was president. Yeah, exactly. And that's why I hope people read your book because there's so much more to the story than those 200 awful days for sure. I find it interesting that both his story and William Henry Harrison's story from one of the earlier books, obviously neither one was president for very long, But fascinating, interesting stories for both of their lives, which again, I think people might be interested in, even if there's very little to tell about their presidency, how they got there, again, kind of is only in America kind of approach to, to how we pick our leaders. Speaking of the Harrison family, let's go to Benjamin Harrison. You say he could be called the most anonymous president in the history of the United States. So why do you say that and what should we know about Benjamin Harrison? Well, he is from Sort of political royalty if you will his father was a congressman his grandfather was president and his great grandfather signed the Declaration of Independence So he certainly has a pedigree here He eventually goes into the family business which is politics, but he does a number of things before that again are interesting and noteworthy He's extremely devout He becomes a lawyer. He goes into the service in the Civil War, again, a hero, mainly in the second half of the war in Sherman's march into Atlanta. He's actually on the front lines, puts his life on the line in front of his men to, to win a couple of key battles there. And eventually he joins the Senate and eventually becomes president. So why is he so anonymous? Well, I think there's a number of things here with these gilded age presidents where we tend to lose them a little bit. There's the bearded general syndrome. You've got like three or four guys Hayes and Harrison and Garfield. They were all, you know, generals. People get them a little bit confused. The fact is he was sandwiched in between Cleveland, and Grover Cleveland basically reversed a lot of the things that he did. And so that sort of eliminated that stuff. And partly the family held onto his papers. Back then the individual president owned all their own papers and some turned them over to the Library of Congress, but many kept for themselves and they wanted to pick the perfect biographer to go tell his story. And it took him like 40 years to find someone to do that. And they did. But by then, unfortunately for Harrison, the two most important topics of his presidency. Are completely irrelevant today, and they're really confusing and they're the kinds of topics that people just say, I don't know if I'm going to go look into a president. I don't want to have to learn about bimetallism and topics like that. He was a high tariff protectionist kind of guy, which was a big deal in the 1880s and 1890s. But by the time, you know, his biography comes out and others are looking at him, that's a non story because we have the income tax and tariffs become so less important in the 20th century. And again, they're confusing because we don't really rely on them much anymore. Okay. You know, people don't know that. Well, I don't understand that. I don't want to think about it. But, but the currency is even worse. Again, this bimetallism, silver and gold. And why do we, why does some of the country, the debtors want to have more silver in the economy? Because then they can pay off their debts in silver and actually get a discount against gold. I mean, people get confused, probably just me trying to highlight the pieces of this. And they think, Oh God, I don't want to hear that story. It was a big part of his story. We're off the gold standard. We've been off the gold standard for the last 50 years. So for people to think about Harrison, you have to think about the tariff and the currency. Those are topics that people just can't really relate to and they can be confusing. I know I had a lot to learn to be able to try to tell those stories. And so I think people just shy away from them. So again, I think he's not One of our most remarkable great presidents. He's not a terrible president. He did the job for four years He did fine. We added six states. He put in a whole bunch of new judges because they passed the circuit courts I mean, he certainly did some things. Yeah But I think he has just lost to history for some of those reasons, including the arcane nature of those two most important issues that people just don't want to spend a lot of time thinking about. And I think going back to your point about his papers, as a, as an archivist at heart, you see how important those archives are. We always called them kind of the raw material of history, and if you don't have those, it's very hard to tell that story. Yeah, it's really a shame because that's really the only biography lengthy biography that's ever been written about Harrison. It was a three volume set that came out in the 1950s, 1960s or so. No one else has really taken it on. I think the people, by the way, at Harrison's home in Indianapolis do a great job of telling his story. And we talked about the presidential sites are really just a blessing for all of us presidential historians out there and they do a great job telling that story. But again, I think in terms of people who want to read the books, there just is not a lot out there. About Harrison in part because if you're a historian, do you want to learn about silver and gold? Maybe not. Maybe i'll go write about grover cleveland instead Only if someone pays me a lot of it then maybe There you go. So we'll go from a president that's not well known at all to one that is extraordinarily Well known and that is theodore roosevelt And you had a really interesting quote. I thought in your presidential chronicles about tr you said Quote, with all his force and determination, Roosevelt was bound to break things now and then. So unquote, what are you referring to with that really great line? So he Roosevelt was one of the most confident human beings in the history of mankind. From a very early age, he believed Sort of the righteousness of every cause that he believed it. And if he believed in it, it was right. And everyone else was wrong. And in many cases, Alan, he was right. And in fact, we benefit from this confidence in this sort of bold approach to things. But you can imagine in politics. Where it's, you know, my way is the right way always. And if it's, if you're against me, you're really wrong and I'm going to go prove you wrong. You can not only ruffle feathers, but you can break things. So let me give you a couple of examples. The time when he, you know, we just talked about Benjamin Harrison actually gives Theodore Roosevelt his first federal job. He's a young man, late 20s, early 30s, and he is given the job in the Civil Service Commission and he's all gung ho. Civil service reform is a big thing for him and he is going to go implement the new civil service laws to the letter. Well, there's a lot of people who are still didn't like that, including most of Harrison's cabinet who went to Harrison to complain and said, can you tone this guy down a little bit? And so Harrison calls him in and Roosevelt says, no, I'm not toning anything down. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do it the right way. And he was doing it the right way, but he really ruffled feathers. He goes into the McKinley administration, initially as the assistant secretary of the Navy. All right. And there's this issue with the USS Maine is blown up in the port in Cuba, and we're about to go to war possibly with Spain, but the administration is still kind of holding off. They're not ready to really declare war. Well, John Long's the secretary of war and he takes a few days off. So when he takes a few days off, TR steps in as the acting secretary and basically takes over and puts, the Navy on a war footing, particularly the fleet over in the Pacific. You know, was he legally eligible to do that because he was the acting secretary? Sure. But you know, look, I worked in the Pentagon for five years. You just don't do that when your boss is out for a few days. And he basically. He wrote a letter to a friend and says, look, I may be rebuked for this, which he was, but I feel it's the right thing to do. So I'm going to do it. He was not one to ask for permission. He frankly wasn't one to ask for forgiveness either, but he certainly wasn't one to ask for permission. And so again, ruffled feathers in terms of breaking things. Well, again, let's look at the Spanish American war. So he resigns from this post, a civilian post in the Navy to go join the army fight as the Rough Riders. He's the absolute hero in Cuba, taking San Juan Heights, which basically won the ground war extremely aggressive, got the right answer. But the Roughriders suffered more casualties than anybody in the war. And so again, to get that outcome, he was willing to pay a price at times. And his, his people were willing to pay a price in order to achieve that righteous cause. So again, sort of some things breaking as president. You know again, he takes some bold stands when he gets annoyed at I think it was the the coal miners were gonna go on strike and he says look i'm gonna arbitrate this and they didn't like it And so he said fine i'll just seize the mines and run it myself and they say okay we give in You know, he tended to you know, there was the time when he basically He sort of tolerated the Panama, um, revolution where he was trying to get a canal built in Panama. Again, a good outcome that we all enjoy, but Columbia rejects Panama was part of Columbia at the time and Columbia rejected this. And so he basically gives a wink and a nod to the people representing Panama. You know, if you go and have a revolution. I'll recognize you as the United States, and I'll send one of my Navy ships down there just to remind the Colombians that I'm recognizing you. Sure enough, we get this revolution, and we get a Panama Canal breaking things along the way. Sort of part of his, his style. But the biggest one, and again, a lot of these led to good outcomes. But there's one that did not lead to a good outcome, and I think it was sort of the culmination of his approach in the end, really did not work, and that was the 1912 election. He comes back from, you know he handpicks Will Taft to be his successor, he goes off on a safari in Africa for a year to try to get away, he comes back, all his supporters are complaining that Taft is not progressive enough, he's not you enough you gotta step back in and, and fix this. And Roosevelt stayed on the sideline for about a year or so, but eventually he jumps in. He wrecks the soul of William Taft, who took all of this so personally because they were so close before this, it ruins Taft's political career basically the political career comes to an end. And the worst thing of all was he splits the Republican party and hands power to his real political rival, Woodrow Wilson. And so this was again, a case where he felt like it's a righteous cause. I've got to get the progressives back in there. I'm going to tear down Taft and win the thing, which he really had no chance of doing because Taft still had a lot of followers. And he hands power again to his real political enemy. That tendency of his, of, I'm right, I'm going to do it my way, a lot of times, Worked out really well, even though things broke along the way sometimes they really broke like the example of 1912 Yeah, and i'm a real fan of tr typically but his treatment of taft In 1912, an old friend, a colleague that, that was devastating to Taft, I know, and really not TR's best moment for sure. Alan, I'm with you totally, because I'm a big fan of TR as well, because he did so many things and the way he did them, but every time I think of him, I have this caveat in my head that I think about taft. Yeah, I think about how unnecessary that was and actually quite harmful on a number of levels That there's always that asterisk in my head when it comes to him because of that experience Yeah, let's talk for a moment about taft. I remember a speech I gave when I was in texas about him because I think he's so often overlooked Or when he's remembered, he's remembered for the infamous bathtub incident. So from your research, what can you tell listeners about his accomplishments in public service and what they should take away about the career and life of William Howard Taft? Yes. So I think Taft, I put him in this bucket of those people who had amazing careers, really productive careers pre presidency. And even post presidency and miserable presidents. John Quincy Adams kind of fits in that mode. Herbert Hoover definitely fits in that mode and Taft also fits in that mode. So I'll give you a, I'll give you two examples, one post president, one pre president that I think really might resonate with folks. I think a lot of people do know that Taft is our only President to also sit on the Supreme Court and he finally gets his chance to be Chief Justice about 10 years after he leaves the presidency, Warren Harding puts him on the court and he's an extremely impactful Supreme Court Chief Justice. He takes the opportunity. He, he reveres the court. It's a very conservative court. Some, some important decisions. He overturns the tenure of office act, which was kind of a big deal to him as a former president. But he actually reorchestrates how the judiciary is run, and he does it in a weird way because of all separation of powers that we talk about today, the court never even wants to talk to the other branches. That wasn't Taft's way. He talked directly to the executive branch, to the legislative branch. They passed laws that actually unified a lot of the parts of the judiciary that had always been, basically every court was its own thing. And now there were a lot more standard rules. The Chief Justice had more authority over all of this. So it was a very substantive role that Taft played when he finally got his chance to sit on the court. I think actually his most impactful activity though came pre presidency and that was in the Philippines. When the Spanish American war ended and William McKinley makes the decision that we're going to keep the Philippines, and this was a big question, I mean, the United States had never been an imperialistic nation. We never acquired land or, or countries through war before and through a lot of complicated things I talk about in the McKinley biography in particular, he makes the conclusion that we will keep the Philippines, we will help them, and eventually we'll let them go free. It was a very high level plan, he had no idea how he was going to do this. And so he's trying to figure out, well, who can I put in charge? And his secretary of state, says what about that judge in Ohio, William Tapp? And he calls taft to the white house and taft is confused like what do you call me for the white house for, he's a federal judge he's already in a great job he's a young man all he wants to do is be on the supreme court but he thinks he's too young for that what is he even calling me about and then mckinley says i want you to go to the philippines and he goes what are you talking about he was not supportive of the president's policy didn't think we should have kept the philippines had no idea how to do this kind of a job and mckinley says look You're the right guy. Everything I've heard about you, you're gonna go in and do this the right way, and I need you to do it. I need you to step down from the bench, which was the hardest thing he'd ever done in his life, and he agrees to do it. And he does amazing stuff. You know, we held the Philippines for almost 50 years. And really, for most of that time, the Philippines didn't want to have much to do with us. They were ready for independence long before Harry Truman finally gave it to them after World War II. But the one period of time that they actually really liked the United States was when William Taft was the Governor General. Taft shows up, And there's already an insurrection going on, fighting against the Americans. The Spanish are gone, but now their overlords are coming from the United States. And you've got Douglas MacArthur's father, Arthur MacArthur, is the general there on the ground. He wants nothing to do with Taft. This is a military operation and I am going to put these people down. And that's the way most colonial powers thought of the colonies that they were uplifting. Not Taft. Half believed in the Philippines for the Filipinos, and one of these sort of trite statements. He believed in benevolent assimilation, not imperialism. And he walked the walk. He went out, day after day, into the jungle, practically, to meet with small local communities, listened to them, and his fellow commissioners were saying to him, Why are we doing this? You don't need this input. And Half says, look, nobody's ever listened to these people before. I'm going to sit here and listen to everything they have to say. And he started incorporating some of those suggestions into the laws. He started to put people into public service positions, government positions. He wasn't importing the military. He was importing teachers. He was importing judges and lawyers. He really took seriously this notion of trying to put the Filipinos on a positive path. To the point when he was ready to be relieved by Theodore Roosevelt to actually get a job on the Supreme Court, his dream job, he turns it down in order to stay with the Filipinos, not once, but twice. And the second time, the Filipinos went on parade, waving signs to try to get the news back to the American president. They were sort of infatuated with the fact that here was a colonial power who cared about us. Now again, he leaves. The Filipino is not too fond of us after a while after that and things got stuck in a rut for another 40 years or so, but he was absolutely the right person at the right time in that role, just like he was as Chief Justice, but not like he was as President. So many facets to his life that I hope people are encouraged by this conversation to go out and learn more and read your biography of him. Which is really well done. Let's talk for a moment about Presidents Harding and his Vice President Coolidge, who then of course becomes President upon Harding's death. They seem very, to be very different personalities. Harding in some ways a party president, it seems like, though he accomplished more, I think, than, than we sometimes let on. And Coolidge, the not dour, but conservative soft spoken president. How did they get along when they worked together as president and vice president, and how would you rate both of them as chief executives? Yeah, I'll take that first part and then I, I think I would actually like to talk in particular about Harding a little bit. Please. Because I think historians have really gotten Harding wrong. The two of them together, they really could not be more different. It's the odd couple. Harding is, I think Alice Roosevelt basically said the white house was like a speakeasy, um, under Harding. I mean, it was prohibition, but plenty of alcohol was flowing, poker parties, cigars, you know, people in their shirt sleeves whale after midnight, swapping stories, the good old, I mean, this was sort of the Harding personalities. One of the things that people liked about him and, and as you said, Alan, I mean, Kevin Kloosh is the opposite of that. Straight laced, pass a turn, I mean, silent cow, the Puritan ethic of his upbringing in Vermont. You know, he never went to any of those sort of events the White House parties and stuff like that. In fact, when he becomes president, the one thing he changes immediately is the atmosphere of the White House. We're not going to have those parties, he and his wife anymore. His wife was actually quite social, even though he was not, but it wasn't gonna be anything like what the Hardings were doing in their White House. So in that sense they were completely different. Policy wise, though, they were actually quite similar. And I think Coolidge rightfully gets a lot of credit because he was president for much, much longer, about six years. Five and a half years or so of the positive elements of the Roaring Twenties. I mean, the 1920s up to that point, and of course, then it crashes as we go into the thirties, but the 1920s were the most productive economic decade we'd ever had. And the policies of Coolidge really started with Harding had a lot to do with that. Cut taxes, protective tariff at the time, cut spending big time. They really sliced that off to get more money into the hands of the American people. And again, a very conservative kind of agenda that they pushed probably harder than anybody else. Uh, to date, and at least over the course of the 1920s was very, very effective in a positive way to many, many Americans. All of those policies started under Warren Harding. Um, and Harding actually had some positive benefits. For those he inherited a reception recession after World War One unemployment up to 12%. He got it down to 4 percent in two years. Take that compared to the Great Depression where it was over 15 percent for practically a decade. And, and he also again with the cutting spending, he was the one Harding was the one who introduced the Bureau of the budget to bring more discipline into the running of the government and the managing of the budget. So I think from a policy standpoint, they were quite similar. They got along pretty well, even though again, socially, they were quite, quite different. The thing I want to add about Harding, as I made the comment, I think that again, I think probably more than any president that I've studied. I just think the narrative about him is generally unfair and wrong. It doesn't mean it's all wrong, but there are elements of it that really are over the top wrong. I mean, I mentioned a number of the things that Harding had done well. He also had the most significant disarmament agreement in the history of the world. You know, whereas Woodrow Wilson basically failed with the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations, couldn't even get it through the U. S. Senate. Harding hosts a disarmament conference where all the top countries in the world agree to cut the number of ships that they're going to have in their navies. He gets the other side in the United States Senate on board from the beginning. So he's politically savvy. It was a really big deal in addition to a lot of the economic stuff. But all of that, of course, with Harding is drowned out by the scandals. And the scandal stories, I think, in my study of Harding, It's very difficult to study Harding because almost everybody who talked about Harding in the wake of his death is a liar. The, the, the deceit that goes on in congressional hearings, in books that are written, these hair raising stories about, you know, how he did things and the people around him did things, most of which was not true. And we learned later over time it wasn't true. It's not helped by the fact that he also had two affairs that became very public. He had the birth of a daughter, outside of marriage that, that was part of this story. Again, that also came out in a book, by the way, that all was true. But in terms of the scandals, look, there were really three under Harding. There was this guy, Charles Forbes, in the veterans department who was clearly taking kickbacks. Harding found out about it and he got rid of him immediately. He was so angry with Forbes. As soon as he found out about it, he shipped him off to Europe, fired, and he eventually went to prison. There was this other guy, Jess Smith, who was part of the quote, Ohio gang, that was supposedly doing a lot of influence peddling around town. And there probably was some influence peddling going on around town. And Harding eventually tells Smith, look, you're going to be arrested tomorrow. Smith goes home. Shoots himself in the head, burns all his papers first. He committed suicide. So nobody's ever actually arrested or charged in that part of the story. But again, there was probably something going on there, but the big one, of course, is Teapot Dome anywhere. I was going when I was telling people, I'm going to write a biography of Warren Harding. The first two words out of the mouth were Teapot Dome. So what was Teapot Dome? People make it out as the biggest scandal, like pre Watergate, um, in American history. Well. Teapot Dome was a very legitimate policy. We had these oil fields that were run by the Navy after World War one, it wasn't a big military need at the time. So the administration decided to sell some leases on the periphery of these oil fields to dig oil and actually make some money. And Albert Fall is the Secretary of the Interior, and the Interior Department, for the non military stuff, does this with oil fields all the time on government land. And so Albert Fall basically tells the Secretary of the Navy, you don't know how to do this, I'll take it off your hand, and in fact, I'm going to negotiate deals that the Navy is going to be the beneficiary of these deals, so it's all going to be good. Sounded all reasonable, Harding thought it was reasonable, they went ahead and they did this. After Harding dies, and that's key here, after Harding dies, we learn that Albert Fall gave those contracts out based on bribes. He was crooked. And he eventually gets convicted, he's the only cabinet person who's ever been convicted of a crime, and he goes to prison for a year over it, he's basically ruined. But Warren Harding knew nothing about this. It all came out after his death, but there's nobody there to defend Harding and again Sort of these scandalous tales that were headline grabbing You know, was there some malfeasance going on in Harding's administration? Sure. It wasn't as bad as Grant's and probably others might you know stack up to it But the whole teapot dome thing has always really bothered me because it just you know Yeah, one cabinet secretary took a bribe But to say that makes Warren Harding the worst president or second worst president or whatever of all time, I think it just belies all the good things he did and really overemphasizes a story that It's kind of blown up out of proportion because of a lot of mistruths. So anyway, that, that's my take on Harding and I learned a lot about this. I mean, I didn't know this going in when I started my research on Harding, but I'm telling you, you start reading some of these books that people have written and you just know that's a lie. That's a lie. That's a lie. And then it's hard to find out the truth and the truth is Harding surrounded himself like Grant did with people he probably shouldn't have and some of them took advantage of that. But was he corrupt himself? Absolutely not. And there's, I don't believe there's any evidence to say, suggest that he is, and I think we overweight that in, in rating Harding as president. That's very good. I think re evaluation seems to be due, and you, you are doing that. You spurred me to learn more about Harding, that's for sure. And before I turn it over to Scott, I want to ask you the same question we asked you last time for these biographies. What were attributes you found that perhaps they all shared or what were some of the biggest differences among these men that you've studied in these volumes? Yeah, it's, it is a good question. I think the, the common attribute would be the same answer I gave you on the first 15 that I covered. When these people became president, they really. took that on very seriously to try to do right for the entire country. Yes, many of them were partisan. Yes, many of them made bad decisions. But you look at how they make decisions, weighing the pros and cons of things. I think, by and large, almost all of these folks really took their oath very seriously to preserve, protect and defend the constitution and do right by the American people. And I think that's a real credit. When the founders set up the country, they, they talked about this need. If you're going to have a Republic where you vote people into office. Those people better be virtuous. They better have that kind of special quality that they're going to operate on behalf of the American people as a whole. And by and large, I think they, they really have done that. I think the biggest difference that I look at is the, is their background. They come from so, you know, again, only in America can you have somebody who's a poor tailor become president of the United States like Andrew Johnson. Or you can get, you know, we've got academics like a Woodrow Wilson who can make his way up to presidency or even a James Garfield was an academic as well to, to make it up there. And even the military folks who made it. You know, they weren't all generals some of them were colonels, or you've got like a William McKinley, who is an 18 year old private in the Civil War, eventually becomes a major, so he actually makes the leap based on his performance to be an officer, a lot of them come from sort of the log cabin, poverty, but some come from wealth, like a Theodore Roosevelt, and so you've got this complete panoply of backgrounds, All leading to the same job. Again, there's no other country in the world that can sort of identify readers with such diverse backgrounds, especially the ones who are coming from poverty to be able to make their way in this world, that American dream opportunity. Those different backgrounds leading them, that's one of the biggest differences that I found between between all of these guys. And one of the many things making them endlessly fascinating. That's for sure. Absolutely. Dr. Brun. Yeah, and on that point, I thought we might get to know each of these presidents a little better by choosing which would be better in certain life scenarios. Okay, are you ready for this? All ready, Scott. All right. Stranded on a desert island of these two POTUS heavyweights. Would you rather be stuck with Theodore Roosevelt or Abraham Lincoln? It's interesting you chose those two, because up on a desert island, if I had to choose from any of the 30 that I've studied or 32 that I've studied, those would be my top two, actually, for a couple of reasons. One, they would be endlessly entertaining. I mean, you sort of just push go and both of them are going to tell stories for hours and hours and actually be entertaining on a desert island, that's not bad. But they're also both kind of survivalists. Yeah. And, and for that reason, I would probably lean to Roosevelt more than anything else. Cause I am not, I would last about 10 minutes on survivor before I would be kicked off the island. Think what Theodore Roosevelt did as a, as a cowboy and a rancher in the black Hills of the Dakota territory and how, how the heck he survived in the Amazon and the river of doubt after the presidency is a great story. You know if he can survive those he can help me survive on a desert island So I think i'm going with tr in that one Well, let's remember lincoln had some survival skills But that's why lincoln's my number two again If I had a second choice, it would be lincoln because he would you know again He he also absolutely a prairie person who knew how to survive. He would be my second choice But I think tr edges him just a little I mean if there are any wild animals lincoln could wrestle them Their hands Right. Alright, uh, who would you rather have as your neighbor? Chester Arthur? Or Calvin and Coolidge. Wow. Two opposite neighbors. I'm a big fan of Chester Arthur's. Um, and, and, and, uh, there's things about him that I really like, but I'll, I mean, I guess exposed for myself. I'm more of the taciturn kind of coolidge quiet guy, I think in my own world. Um, and kind of like a quiet neighborhood, so I'd probably go with Coolidge. I mean, Arthur was out until 3 in the morning every night, coming in after drinking and all that stuff. I don't think I need that in my neighborhood. Maybe a couple of blocks away, but in terms of my neighbor, I think I'd rather a little quieter with Coolidge around. Yeah, you're probably right. Okay, I agree with you that way. If you needed a loan, who would be the first to step up? Woodrow Wilson or Benjamin Harrison? I don't know. Oh, if there's a choice between Woodrow Wilson and anyone, I would probably take the anyone. I don't know. I don't know. I just don't think Wilson's a guy that you could trust. He turned on so many of his close friends for really sort of trivial reasons, in my opinion. I could just see him phoning me money one day and asking me for it back the next day. Whereas Harrison, I don't think you'd get anything like that with. So, it's a little bit by default, but also a credit to Harrison. I would definitely be in the Harrison camp on that one. Okay. You get threatened by a burglar in a dark alleyway. Which man has your back? Ulysses S. Grant? William Howard Taft? Oh boy, again. Who has your back? Yeah, you've really hit it right here because these are again two opposites. You've got the gentle giant in Will Taft. Right. Who's gonna scare people away because at least this president, he's 350 pounds and 6 foot whatever. And so maybe that's the right answer. You know, Ulysses Grant is like my size, like 5'7 you know what I mean? He got heavier later in life, but he was most of his life he was like 130, 140 pounds, so really quite slender. Um, not very intimidating, but boy, in a fight, I think I'd probably rather have Grant. Even though the intimidation would come from Taft, I think I want the lawyer next to me, and the lawyer of the two definitely is Grant. So I think I'd go with Grant. Yeah, I agree with you there. Finally, a personal question for you. Which president Of this batch, what would you most like to sit down and just have a meal with? Mmm. Boy, you know, I find them all fascinating. I would have a meal with any of them if I could. I think if I had to pick one, it probably would be Theodore Roosevelt. Um, now I realize having a meal with Roosevelt means I don't speak. Because basically in TR's presence, you say hello and then he would speak the entire hour. I would eat, he'd be done, and he would leave. But it would probably be the enormously entertaining time of my life just to be able to hear him go on with whatever topic was important to him that day. I mean, I would love to ask questions of any of these guys, but for pure entertainment value, I think, uh, Theodore Roosevelt would be at the top of the list. Yeah. Alan, who do you think? I would have to sit down with Abraham Lincoln. I must admit, I mean, that's it. There's just no way I could say any other, any other selection there, but like David said, I'd love to sit down with each and every one of them and pick their brains. If I could get a word in edge watcher, right? And why would you really? That's right. I mean, just to spur them on to the next, the next statement. Yes. That'd be about it. David, this has been really, really interesting and a lot of fun at the same time. What do you have lined up next? Well, I continue on my journey. You know, my goal is to eventually write about all of these folks. Um, I've published the first six volumes. I'm working on volume seven right now. So I've already pretty much put in the can Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt, which was really interesting to do back to back because there's such sort of Uh, but between the two of them as sort of the archetypes of the New Deal Democrat versus the conservative view of Hoover. So it's fascinating to think of them back to back. And I'm right now focusing on Truman, who's always been one of my favorites, and so it's a chance to really get to know him. Uh, has been such a pleasure and I'm having a thrill to, to work through Truman and eventually I'll get to Eisenhower and those four will make up Volume 7 of Presidential Chronicles, probably coming out sometime late in 2024 as I, as I continue to work through the series. Very good. Well, David, thank you so much. As always, we've greatly enjoyed having you on American POTUS. Such a pleasure guys. It's always great fun to talk to you. A great opportunity to chat with your, with your listeners on a topic that obviously we all share so much passion for. So it's been a pleasure and love to love to be part of the show. This is Alan Lowe. Along with Scott Brunn, I want to thank you and our guest, David Fisher, for joining us on American POTUS. For more information, please go to AmericanPOTUS. org.