[Abridged] Presidential Histories

"You are the only man whom in all my life I have met who has repeatedly and in every way done for me what I could not do for myself and nobody else would do." - New York Governor Theodore Roosevelt to Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, 1900 ~~~ Theodore Roosevelt didn't reach the top of American politics without a little help from his friends, and no friend was more important...

"A good leader inspires people to have confidence in the leader. A great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves." - Eleanor Roosevelt ~~~ Eleanor Roosevelt is the most enduringly famous first lady in American history, and for good reason. She transformed what a first lady can be, criss-crossing the country to meet and listen to Americans in need and serve as their advoca...

"In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. "The first is freedom of speech and expression ... "The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way ... "The third is freedom from want ... "The fourth is freedom from fear." - Franklin Roosevelt, Jan. 6, 1941, State of the Unio...

"By virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States ... I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of War and the Military Commanders ... to prescribe military areas … from which any or all persons may be excluded," - Executive Order No. 9066, Feb. 12, 1942 ~~~ Two months after Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order permitting the...

"The president wants to come into your home and sit at your fireside for a little fireside chat," - Robert Trout of CBS News, introducing one of FDR's radio speeches. ~~~ FDR is the longest-serving president in U.S. history, winning four consecutive terms. That doesn't happen without darn good PR. Historian Howard Holzer, director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute...

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little," - Franklin Roosevelt, Jan. 20, 1937. ~~~ FDR had one of the most privileged upbringings of any U.S. President. Why was he the one to enact the most radical social and economic reforms in U.S. history? Historian H.W. Brands discusses...

"Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy forget in time that men have died to win them," - FDR on Bill of Rights Day, 1941. ~~~ Every president's death is mourned differently. What do those differences tell us about the evolving culture of our nation? Historians Lindsay Chervinsky and Matthew Costello join me to discuss their new book Mourning the Presidents: Loss an...

"I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people" - Franklin Delano Roosevelt, July 2, 1932, upon accepting the Democratic nomination for president ~~~ Did the New Deal get the United States out of the Great Depression? Or was it World War II? Just how successful was the New Deal anyway? Eric Rauchway , a distinguished professor of history at UC Davis and the author...

"This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny." - Franklin Roosevelt ~~~ When FDR was sworn in on March 4, 1933, the nation, and the world, were in dire straights. Nation's around the world had abandoned democracy for militaristic authoritarian solutions, and many Americans were tempted to join them. Radio priest Father Coughlin espoused an American fascism from the ri...

"The fundamental business of the country, that is, production and distribution of commodities, is on a sound and prosperous basis," - Herbert Hoover, on the eve of the Great Depression, Oct. 25, 1929 What caused the Great Depression? Robert McElvaine , a professor of history at Millsaps College and the author of Down and Out in the Great Depression: Letters from the “Forgotten Man” and T...

"It simply comes to this: men hate me more after they work for me than before. They don't need think they are coming to a snap. They're coming to a perfect hell and I am the devil." - Herbert Hoover, 1897, written from the gold fields of Australia. The United States had seen generals, publishers, history professors, and lawyers - oh so many lawyers - become president. But it ha...

"My country owes me nothing. It gave me, as it gives every boy and girl, a chance. It gave me schooling, independence of action, opportunity for service and honor.” - Herbert Hoover Herbert Hoover entered government a self-described progressive. But by the time the end of his life, his opposition to the New Deal had some calling him a father of modern conservativism. What's the truth of...

"In America today, we are nearer a final triumph over poverty than is any other land." - Herbert Hoover. ~~~ Herbert Hoover made his fortune as a mining engineer, made his name as a humanitarian leader, and lost his reputation as a president. Nobody knew the great Depression was coming when they elected Hoover, but the great irony of his presidency is that, after savings millions of live...

History remembers Calvin Coolidge as "Silent Cal," but the notoriously quiet president was also an early adopter of emerging forms of mass media, such as radio and motion picture.  Join me as I talk to historian David Greenberg , author of Calvin Coolidge and Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency , about how Coolidge quietly became one of the more effective image...

"The business of America is business." - Calvin Coolidge. ~~~ Calvin Coolidge had a saying: When you see 10 problems coming down the road, nine will probably go into the ditch on their own. Translation? Don't do anything. But what happens when the one problem that doesn't go into the ditch is the Great Depression? Follow along as Coolidge works his way up the government food ch...

On a late summer day in September, four podcasters got together to record the first ever History Podcast Friendsgiving Spectacular! Tune in as three respected podcasters join me for a round table discussion of American and presidential history. The other podcasters are: Jerry Landry, Presidencies of the United States Alycia, Civics & Coffee   Howard Dorre, Plodding through the Presidents If yo...

Politicians having affairs is nothing new in the history of the world. But what happens when they're sleeping with an enemy spy? Join me as I talk to author and lawyer James Robenalt , author of The Harding Affair: Love and Espionage During the Great War , about Warren Harding's 15-year affair with Carrie Fulton Phillips, who became an Imperial German spy during World War I; whether we s...

First, Warren G Harding was a beloved president. Then, he became synonymous with government corruption. But today, we know him for his sex scandals - scandals that took more than 90 years to fully come to light. Follow along as Harding jumps from the newspaper business to politics, sleeps with a potential german spy, fathers a child out of wedlock with another mistress, wins the presidency at a ti...

"Who was the biggest presidential bust?" "Do any of our presidents have an unvarnished legacy on race?" "Which 19th century president would fail under the media scrutiny of today?" You've all been submitting some great questions this summer and today I take some time to answer them. Thank you everyone who participated. Enjoy the show! Support the show

Woodrow Wilson's wives had a tremendous impact on his presidency. His first wife, Ellen Axson Wilson, died the week World War I broke out in Europe, leaving the president so depressed at a moment of crisis that he told aids he wished someone would shoot him. Less than a year later, he was over it, and instead obsessed with his courtship of Edith Bolling Galt, sometimes writing her three lette...

For the first 128 years of American history, the United States followed the parting advice of its first president, George Washington, to stay out of European wars. That all changed with Woodrow Wilson. Wilson wielded the power of rhetoric to change not just the country's course, but the way Americans thought of themselves - They had a destiny to make the world safe for democracy. But even as...

No 20th century president did more to set back racial equality in the United States than Woodrow Wilson. His administration introduced a silent policy of segregating the federal government, and when he finally spoke out about it, he gave weight to a philosophy that was used to rationalize continued segregation for decades more. Join me as I talk with Eric S. Yellin , an associate professor of Hist...

Woodrow Wilson is one of the most legislatively accomplished progressive presidents in American history.  His list of achievements ranges from the first progressive income tax to the creation of the Federal Reserve, an inheritance tax, a child labor law, and more. But a list doesn't do justice to the effort it took to get these laws passed or the impact they had on the Americans' lives....

The Spanish flu of 1918 wasn't from Spain and it didn't start or end with 1918. It lasted for years, killed millions around the world, and it infected President Woodrow Wilson himself, right as he was negotiating the treaty that would end World War I. The costs of that infection may have been the values and world order he'd taken the United States into the war to achieve. Join me as...

Woodrow Wilson was once regarded as one of the great progressive presidents of the 20th century. Then historians took another look at his record on race. Today, he's a bit of a mixed bag. But one thing you can't argue is the years he was president changed the world. Follow along as Wilson gives up on politics to become an academic, only to unexpectedly rise from Princeton president to Ne...