the representation of the city, and i became fascinated with this period icy as formative in the contemporary form that new york takes the position on the one hand, you know, these draconian cutbacks, and on the other hand these investments in marketing the image of the city at the same time that, you know, the resources for the livelihood of the city were being taken away. so, i think that while in new york that really fascinated me. and i've taken that fascination with me to california and tried to convince people in santa cruz of the importance of this, and i think it has residence because i think that, you know, cities around the country when faced with crisis have a lot of these kind of decisions to make about how, how to represent

themselves. >> miriam greenberg is the author, branding your cow city of crisis was sold to the world -- branding new york a city of crisis sold to the world. ..

>> historian h.w. brands recounts the life of former president franklin delano roosevelt. mr. brands presents a comprehensive biography of the 32nd president, recalling his childhood, his complex relationship with his wife eleanor and his presidency. the event hosted by the book people bookstore in austin, texas is 75 minutes. [applause] >> thank you all for coming. i'm delighted to see old friends and maybe some new friends, familiar faces and some not quite so familiar. i will talk billion why i wrote this book but i hesitate to start in the way i usually do because i wind up giving a lecture quite often. i don't really want to give a lecture. i usually talk overtime so people don't have a chance

to ask questions. i have toyed with the idea starting off with the questions. and i could just ask people what they want to know about franklin roosevelt. but, just to make sure that it goes in the direction that i want, i think i will ask the first question. [laughter] because i know what the answer is. >> who is going to answer it? >> i'll try that one too, if i need help, i will let you know. the obvious question for anybody who has written recently about franklin roosevelt, why do we need another biography of franklin roosevelt? the answer we don't. we don't need another biography of franklin roosevelt. the he had better question, why would you want another biography of franklin roosevelt? there is really basic answer to this question. and i will ask it at the risk of appearing mercenary. how many of you biography if is one or more, biography of franklin roosevelt on your shelves at home? okay, all right. so the rest of you, you do

need this one because you don't have one. [laughter] for those of you who -- >> [inaudible] >> i'll get to eleanor. she is large part of the story. for those who could have one, i will have to tell you the reason i wrote this book, i'm not saying this is the reason the world needs a book another one on franklin roosevelt, the reason i wrote about it, my students had been asking me for years, after i would lecture on franklin roosevelt, they could come up to me say, what is a good book you can recommend? what a biography of franklin roosevelt you could recommend? i had to say there are a couple of three and four and five-volume biographies of franklin roosevelt. i would have to say most of those had been unfinished. arthur schlesinger got three volumes out. he got distracted. got at job in the kennedy white house. franklin wrote for our five volumes and he died.

this happens. roosevelt tends to capture biographers. other presidents do this. robert carrow essentially sucked into the lyndon johnson whirlpool and will be at least another few years before gets out. and, the result of this was, that when those students would ask me what i can read on franklin roosevelt, i didn't have an answer. there was no one volume biography of franklin roosevelt i could point to i thought was quite satisfactory. and the other thing was, this gets to the i'll admit. immodesty in me i thought i could probably write a better one volume biography of franklin roosevelt that was on the market. not as though i was trying to fill a hole that no one tried to fill. i thought, i happen to believe a story is good it is worth retelling. you if you can tell it better than other people tell it give it a try. this is what i tried to do. i will leave it to critics,

will leave it to you to decide whether i have succeeded. that is why, sort of one reason why i took on this project. now another reason was, that as scott suggested, i have, some years ago i decided i was going to write a history of the united states in several volumes. and, some of you have heard this story. i proposed this project to a publisher, who just laughed in my face. nobody writes, because i was thinking six volumes, six or seven volume history of the united states. nobody will publish that and nobody will buy it. i thought, well, that's a shame. this particular author said, excuse me this particular publisher said, who do you think you are anyway? will durant? now, there are a few of you who know what that means. will durant wrote at 17-volume, i think it was called the story of civilization. i think it was a book of the month club sort of thing. it was a big deal in the 1940s. i'm very attracted by the idea of one author taking on

this really big subject. because there is something to me, this kind of engaging about one mind trying to deal with this big period. typically, textbooks, well, studies of american history or other big histories are written by several authors. i happen to be a coauthor of a textbook. somebody deals with the colonial period. somebody deals with the early national period and so on. you get a certain result out of that but it is not quite the same as having one person lead you through this. so, i had this plan i was actually going to write this history of the united states but i wasn't going to tell anybody that i was doing it. and i was going to write it in the form of a series of biographies. biographies because, well, people, buy, buyinggraphyes. biographies are closest genre of historical non-fiction to novels. they allow you to develop a character. they allow readers to get inside the head of a character. you really get to know somebody. they have the closest thing to dialogue that you find in

most historical non-fiction in that you can get letters and diaries, people speak. they write maybe and sometimes they just so lilly questionize but nonetheless there they are. i wanted to write a series of biographies. first one i wrote was about theodore roosevelt. then i jumped backwards in time to write about benjamin franklin and then andrew jackson. the lives of the two overlapped. benjamin franklin lived until 1790. andrew jackson was born in 1767. just as time benjamin franklin was stepping off the stage, andrew jackson was stepping on. i tend to approach biographies as lives and times. so individuals i choose somehow summarize or encap you late main themes of american history during their period. my book on benjamin frankly is, the first american. benjamin frankly was born a british subject and died an

american citizen. how did that happen? andrew jackson, this is the story of emergence of american democracy. theodore roosevelt deals with industrial era and progressive era and first world war. franklin roosevelt is the next of this era. he tells the story of great american crises in the 20th century. if you want to understand why modern america is the way it is you need to understand franklin roosevelt. this gets more precisely more why the another biography of franklin roosevelt and what does brands bring that is new? i tell some of my graduate students, some who i see here, people that write history are expected to deliver something new and the new stuff can either be new information or new interpretation. i can tell you that, franklin roosevelt has been written about enough and has been studied enough i don't claim to have a bunch much new information. there are odds and ends here and there but, but i think my contribution is in terms of an interpretation.

a new interpretation. historians have been arguing and political scientists have been arguing whether franklin roosevelt was a conservative or a liberal. and i happen to think he was more than, he wasn't a conservative. he wasn't a liberal. i happen to contend he was a radical, but not a radical in the sense that people who started this argument in the 1960s or even earlier would say, radical in 1960s was expected to be socialist or perhaps a marxist. in fact to put a finer point on it, roosevelt was less a radical than his presidency was a radical presidency. that's why the subtitle of the book is, the title is, traitor to his class, the subtitle privileged life and radical presidency of franklin roosevelt. his presidency was radical in two respects. in the first place it utterly transformed americans expectations of government. when the roosevelt became president in the 192 it was expected that people would

look after themselves primarily and if misfortune befell them that was their tough luck. government's job was not to rescue people from crises, emergencies or, financial distress. that was not part of the expectation. by the time roosevelt left office, that was a part of the expectation. we can argue, people still do argue, whether this is a good thing or a bad thing or, to what degree it is good and what degree it's bad. and for the last 20 years, maybe even 30 years, back to 1980 there were a lot of people who thought the new deal and roosevelt's approach to governance had gone too far. that in fact, the country would be much better off, much better served if individuals looked after themselves and government stepped off the scene. and then financial melt down of the last six months occurred and all of sudden people are remembering that government does have a role. it's just, maybe it's the country's bad lucky will take it as perhaps my good luck we arrived at another

fdr moment in american history where all of sudden, yes, the role of the government in bailing out failing industries, in preserving people from the worst excesses or the downturns of the capitalist marketplace. that role seems to be acknowledged. in fact it seems to be embraced. the second aspect which roosevelt's presidency was radical was that roosevelt utterly turned around american expectations of the united states with respect to the rest of the world. roosevelt inherited a country that was almost irretrieveably isolationist in 1932. by the time he died in 1945, united states, americans overwhelmingly had been converted to the idea that the united states needed to pay continuing and substantial attention to the affairs of the world. that the peace of the world would not keep itself. in fact it wouldn't be kept without the participation of the united states. and in both these respects,

both in the respect of what americans expected of government at home and what americans expected of their country in the world. so, well roosevelt do his work or so radically did he change american expectations that, neither one of those principles has been seriously challenged in the 63 years since his death. okay. so that's sort of why the book, that is contribution of the book. now, as to what the book actually does, that's kind of the big stuff. that's what i have to say in terms of the justification for the book, and you know, its contribution to the history of the united states. but the interesting stuff in the book is the actually much more to do with the personal life of franklin roosevelt. and this is the first part of the subtitle. again, actually gets at the title itself. the title is. "traitor to his class." it was a charge leveled against roosevelt during his lifetime. during the first year, actually first two terms of

his presidency. he was generally thought to be someone who had sold out the interests of the well to do, of the well-educated, of the well-off. sold them out to this kind of raving populism and it was a puzzle for those people who knew franklin roosevelt how this had come about. and this is, i hope, the kind of tension built into the subtitle of the book. the privileged life and radical presidency of franklin roosevelt. here was this child of privilege, a son after wealthy family who never really had to work a day in his life. who could have spent his entire life as hyde park gentleman, a hudson valley gentleman but he decided to go into politics. it wasn't particularly genteel type of politics. he became the greatest champion of ordinary americans. he then established and effected what i called this radical presidency. so the question is how did this come about? getting at this requires looking very closely at the personal life of franklin roosevelt.

now, i will stop and somebody can ask me, so what was it about the personal -- yes? >> how did he -- as a man who came of generations of wealth, and privilege and power, how did he come to identify so much -- >> a very pertinent question. thank you for asking that. >> the question? >> the question was, how did this child of privilege become the champion of ordinary americans? and the answer takes about 45 years to work out in roosevelt's life but i can summarize it. i do summarize in 900 pages in the book and i can do better than that tonight. for the first 30 years of roosevelt's life, first 25 years of his life, 20 years of his life he didn't even go to school until he was 14 years old. he was tutored at home. he then had, he went to graten school and went to harvard. he cruised through harvard. he was editor of the crims son.

he studied for about a year at columbia law school until he passes bar exams and he went off to practice. he didn't stick around to get his degree. he just started a law practice. well he was essentially an apprentice in a law practice. through all of this time, he had the kind of sense of obligation to a prodder community that -- broader community one could describe oblige. he was born wealthy. his parents gave to the proper charities and he was made to understand that because much had been given to him, at least something was expected. maybe not much was expected but something was expected. so it was a kind of politics as i say, of, well you could almost call it the politics of conned today send shun. he was sincere enough in relatively shallow way. couple things happened. one is, his 5th cousin,

theodore roosevelt, suddenly became president of the united states. and, shortly there of a, cousin ted became uncle ted because franklin roosevelt married eleanor roosevelt. who before she married franklin roosevelt. was eleanor roosevelt. she became eleanor roosevelt roosevelt. at the wedding, theodore roosevelt who gave his niece away. congratulated franklin. said franklining, nothing like keeping the name in the family. there is in fact this wedding ceremony, day of the wedding is one of these critical moments. in, well not so much a critical moment in the development of franklin roosevelt's character, we'll get to those. but a critical eleanor roosevelt's understanding what she had gotten into. when i originally conceived the book and when i pitched it to my publisher it was

going to be a dual biography. it was going to be biography of franklin and eleanor. it was going to be called franklin and eleanor. there was a book written, 37, 36 years ago, by joseph lash, called eleanor and franklin. and this is really the story, it was written, joseph lash was a dear friend of eleanor roosevelt. it is eleanor with franklin alongside. i was going to reverse this but i wanted to tell the story of the two lives together because i don't really think you can understand franklin's personal life and development without paying large attention to eleanor. frankly i don't think you can understand his politics either without paying close attention to eleanor. by my publisher, was a little bit nervous about the idea of publishing a dual biography. dual biographyes are a little bit chancesy. you don't know exactly how to market them or where to position them. i allowed myself to be talked out of calling the book, franklin and eleanor.

i didn't tell the publisher i was going to write the same book as before it would just have a different title. the book is actually a dual biography of franklin and eleanor roosevelt. and eleanor, eleanor comes on the scene shortly after franklin does. she is born two years after franklin. she grows up in the large circle of the extended roosevelt family. she is the niece of theodore roosevelt. i say who was, franklin roosevelt's fifth cousin. eleanor roosevelt had unfortunate, rather than unhappy, almost tragic childhood. in some sort of the ordinary tragic sense but also in some peck collar senses. -- peck cure eleanor roosevelt's mother was one of the unique beauties in new york society in 1880s. her nam was anna roosevelt. she was as i say one of the most beautiful women anybody knew.

eleanor, well, how many of you, how many of you have a mental image of eleanor roosevelt? okay. without, eleanor is not with us. how many of you, for home of you is that mental image strikingly beautiful? okay. now, in eleanor's defense, i'm sure that nearly all of you, the mental image all of you have is of a woman who is probably in her 60s and probably hasn't bothered to comb her hair. just this two weekends ago i was in new york, for a gathering of the theodore roosevelt association and it brought some of the roosevelts together i was talking to this guy who said his brother was a member of the new york state highway patrol and somewhat older than he was. and he remembers from the early 1960s pulling this woman over on the taconac parkway. she was driving very erraticly and very fast. and she just, as he said,

she looked horrible. she really looked like she hadn't washed her hair in two weeks. she was wearing this dirty old house dress and she was very fraez he willed and really in a hurry to get somewhere. she handed over drivers license. he looked, you got to be kidding. no, that is me all right. it was eleanor roosevelt. in eleanor -- in eleanor's defense we remember her in advanced middle age. we all look better at 20 than when we're 30 years older than that. however, however, this is the critical point, anna roosevelt, the beautiful mother, tells her daughter, you are my ugly duckling. okay. now i ask you, how do you interpret that? you're my ugly duckling she says to her young daughter. i don't know at the time if

eleanor knew the story of the ugly duckling and what the ugly duckling becomes, of course, the beautiful swan. well, if you read eleanor's memoirs, and she wrote a couple volumes of memoirs, what she heard was ugly. she wasn't thinking of swan. and so this is the thing that sticks in her mind. then her mother dice. and so her mother never has a chance to revise this judgment upon her daughter. eleanor grows up thinking these is ugly. knowing she is awkward. awkward physically. awkward socially. she always feel out of place. she is much taller than everybody else. she is 5'11". and shy doesn't know what to do with herself. her father dice not long after her mother. she goes off to live with some grandparents who clearly resent having to raise another generation of kids. oh, and there's a moment too, when, and this is, this is one of the problems of writing any biography where

you get as closely as you canoe the personal lives. there's one bit of evidence, again i will let you figure out what to make of the evidence, i present this piece of evidence and i say, sort of basically make of it what you will. eleanor was living with her grandparents and there were some rather strange uncles, kind of hovering around the larger household, and eleanor had a friend over to spend the night. and the friend remarked, and then remembered this some years later, that eleanor had these three stout locks and deadbolts on her bedroom door inside the house. and she, and the friend asked, what are the locks for? and eleanor said, to keep my uncles out. okay. was this precaution taken in advance? was it something after the

fact? i don't know. i just don't know. any way, there it is. but eleanor grew up convinced that she was unlovely, and unloveable. she was very reluctant to put her emotions on the line because whenever she had in the past she had been disappointed. her parents had died. people indicated they didn't love her. this is eleanor at the age of 20. and out of the blue along comes franklin roosevelt. franklin roosevelt, i don't know if any of you have seen pictures or have a mental image of the young franklin roosevelt, i will share an experience that i had with a woman, much older woman who had, she was old enough to have remembered, i guess, actually encountered franklin roosevelt when he was relatively young. so this could have been say, 1920, 1915 oar 1920. this is woman i talked to

probably eight or ten years ago. again you decide what to make of this comment. but we were talking about what franklin roosevelt was like when he was young. and she said, bill, you must know that when franklin roosevelt was young, he was a god. [laughter] that's what she said. well you see the pictures of young franklin roosevelt and he is a handsome guy. he was athletic. and he was vig royce. he was outgoing. he was charming. he was rich. he had everything going for him. and out of the blue, he decides to woo eleanor roosevelt. now eleanor roosevelt was not rich. eleanor roosevelt was not charming. eleanor roosevelt, well, she certainly didn't consider herself very good-looking you although, again in defense of eleanor, there are pictures, a couple of photographs, i include them in the book of eleanor when she was young. and, eleanor's cousin alice

roosevelt, alice roosevelt longworth was one who really never had a good word for just about anybody, especially anyone she was close to. eleanor, excuse me, alice roosevelt lived in washington for years and years and years. she lived into the 1970s. she was born the same year as franklin roosevelt in 1882. and she had, she had a difficult girlhood herself with her own father, with theodore roosevelt. alice roosevelt when she had this house for decades in dupont circle in washington had a sofa in the front room and on the sofa there was a pillow. and on the pillow in needlepoint was the saying, if you don't have something nice to say about somebody, come sit here beside me. this was alice's approach to the world. and, but alice occasionally would find something in her heart to say, sort of good about somebody else.

and she gave eleanor something of a backhanded compliment when she said, you know, eleanor, eleanor was not as ugly as some people seemed to think. in fact, when she was young, she had beautiful long, blond hair. and a tall athletic figure. now if alice had simply left it at that would have been fine. of course alice being alice she had to go on and say, if those hateful grandparents simply gotten her teeth fixed and if she had a chin, well, so anyway. so eleanor is wondering if anybody is ever going to love me. along comes franklin. and, gives every impression of loving her. and he courts eleanor and in fact, defies his mother, sara dell know roosevelt, quite a piece of work in her own right. maybe i should have, i sort of did, write a book simply

about franklin and the women in his circle around him. there were some very powerful, very formidable women, starting with his mother sara. who refused to accept the idea that her son should marry eleanor roosevelt. she did her best to sabotage the relationship. she sent him off on a cruise thinking that he would meet some other young woman, and his heart would be wooed away but it wasn't. he came back and franklin insisted that he would marry eleanor, even against sara's counsel and against her wishes. so eleanor begins to think, well, gee, you know, maybe he really does love me. maybe there is more here. i have to say that eleanor was certainly the most intelligent, the best-educate, the best-read of any of the girls in franklin's circle so that certainly appealed to him. but still eleanor in the back of her mind has these doubts. what does see in me? they get married. 1905.

and actually st. patrick's day. theodore has come, theodore roosevelt, eleanor's uncle, because she is now an orphan, he is one who will give eleanor away. the wedding takes place in the house of, the house that sara's mother has, in new york and, so the wedding takes place and, the vows are exchanged and the, ceremony itself takes place in a small room and then everybody adjourns to this larger parlor. everybody adjourns to the large parlor and they gather around theodore roosevelt. thee theodore roosevelt who always had to be center of attention. in fact alice, his daughters once said of her father, if you want to understand my father you need to realize he has to be the bride at every wedding and corpse at every funeral. he became almost the bride at this wedding and all the guests gravitate immediately towards theodore roosevelt

and so does the groom franklin, leaving eleanor standing there by herself. and at this point, she certainly, well, she must have seen something of her future, in that, apparently politics is a greater draw for my husband than perhaps i am. okay. it wouldn't be the first time an ambitious young man perhaps didn't pay enough attention to his wife. eleanor, learns to live with it. the, the relationship, the marriage seems to be relatively happy although, eleanor continues to have some doubts. franklin by this time has decided he is going to model his career, model his life on theodore roosevelt. there is something quite, well, almost unique about franklin roosevelt's experience and his path to the white house. in american politics it is exceedingly rare for anybody

to become president and to have been preparing in a very serious way, a way that includes, sort of reasonable expectations he might actually get the job for more than just a few years ahead of time. what happens in politics, typically is, somebody decides that he or she likes politics and goes into politics at local level. succeeds there. and perhaps is elected to the state legislature and then maybe to congress. becomes a governor perhaps or a senator. only gradually do they realize, hey, you know what? i could become president. once they get close enough to be able to measure themselves against people actually in the white house or top level of politics do they say, well, i'm as smart as that guy. i'm as talented as that guy. i could do it. franklin roosevelt was one of two individuals who, from a very early age, that is from very young adulthood was able to size up a president, personally at close range and say, i could do that. because, he spent a lot of

time around the theodore roosevelt white house. and he looked at uncle ted, and he said, well if he can do it, i can do it. and he began -- oh i should ask, who do you think is the other one i'm thinking of. yes? >> john adams. >> john quincy adams. father had been president of the united states. bill clinton likes to show that one where he is shaking john kennedy's hands. john kennedy shook lots of people's hands. there is nothing special about bill clinton in that regard. bill clinton is dreams of this. in terms of i could really do this. okay. franklin roosevelt decides the way to get to the white house is to follow uncle ted's path. theodore roosevelt started out in new york legislature. that is what franklin is going to do. theodore then went to washington and became assistant secretary of the navy. that's what franklin roosevelt is going to do. theodore roosevelt came back to new york and was elected governor of new york. that's what franklin roosevelt is going to do. theodore roosevelt had six children. that's what franklin roosevelt is going to do.

that is what he informed eleanor. [laughter] okay, now, oh i'm lecturing again i don't want to give away the whole story. i do have to tell you this really gets at crux of the personal story here because they do have six children. eleanor, you theodore, franklin didn't do it by himself obviously. they have six children but, going to ask you something. there is one aspect of this is kind of, it struck me as string. strange. i want to know if i'm only one or struck you as strange. they have a daughter. anna is oldest child. first son is named james for franklin's father. the next son to come along is franklin, jr. fair enough. named after franklin. but franklin, jr. dies at age of nine months. now they have couple more kids and then, when they have a fifth child they name him franklin, jr. is this weird? does -- how many think it is weird? how many think it's natural?

i had never heard of it before. but i certainly understand. maybe i should have heard it. i'm named for my father. i hesitate to think, shudder to think if i had as a child would there be somebody else coming along stealing my name? i don't know. second franklin, jr. seems not to have been damaged by the experience. anyway, after six children, this is where, this is where the rubber hits the road, after six children, eleanor, well, i guess franklin probably decided enough is enough because uncle theodore had six. but eleanor really decided enough was enough. and, this is where we go from the area of what i can demonstrate to what we can maybe surmise. in the book i don't pretend this is anything more than surmise. in fact in the book i don't even go as far i'm going to go and tell you right now. there is, well, okay i'm going to tell you what we do know.

shortly after the 6th child arrives, franklin roosevelt has an affair with a woman who is eleanor roosevelt's social secretary. a woman who is about 10 years younger, 12 years younger than eleanor. a woman who is, i think most people would say, considerably more attractive than eleanor especially the way eleanor is thinking feeling after having six children. lucy mercer hadn't been married. hadn't had any children. she was a much brighter personality. she was a lot of fun. nobody really, nobody ever accused eleanor roosevelt of being fun. she was, she was a good solid citizen but not fun. now, the affair was one that eleanor suspected for some while. she couldn't help suspecting it because her cousin alice would helpfully drop hints saying, well, eleanor, do

you know who i saw, no, eleanor, do you know what lovely woman i saw franklin driving around with today? and alice of course was dying for eleanor to say, who, who? but eleanor refused to give alice that satisfaction. and alice was just, why doesn't she, why doesn't she ask? eleanor understood something was going on but she didn't have to confront it directly. as long as she didn't have to confront it directly she chose not to i think because she couldn't decide what she would do. as long as she didn't have to make a decision, she didn't. but in the summer of 1918 she had to make a decision through a series of, well, accidents, things that might easily have gone the other way. one could only imagine how that would have played out. franklin roosevelt was assistant secretary of the navy. in that capacity he traveled to france in the last part of the first world war to

see how the navy was doing and figure out what to do with some of the naval installations and naval equipment. while he was there he got letters from lucy. until this time he and lucy had been living in washington. so they didn't have occasion to write to each other. they could speak to each other. they could telephone to each other. but now he is across the ocean and she writes letters. franklin roosevelt inherited a characteristic of the dell know family -- delano family and that was never to throw anything away. so he kept the letters. and that might have been that except that also, on the voyage back from france he became deathly ill. when he arrived in new york he was dell leer just with fever. he had to be carried from the ship to the town house on the upper east side and his bags were taken, by a

couple of naval attaches took bags up. he is lying in bed dell leer just eleanor uncovers uncovers the letters. at this point she says in her memoir the bottom fell out of her life. she had to confront what she suspected and she has to figure out what to do. from here on out we get sort of family legend handed on down from generation to generation. as the family legend goes, eleanor, and this is the phrase that's repeated, eleanor offered franklin his freedom. under new york divorce law in those days if eleanor contested a divorce, if she hadn't offered him his freedom he would have basically had to stay married. but she and with eleanor it is kind of hard to tell when eleanor is being magnanimous,

when eleanor is being what a later generation might call passive aggressive. but anyway she sort of throws the ball on franklin's court. now, perhaps she understands how it's going to turn out. eleanor was very astute figuring out how things were going to work it. -- out. they worked out i assume as she expected. she offers franklin his freedom. apparentlyly her phrase. and franklin declines. now, if he had declined immediately, dear, no, no, i love you, i'm going to stay with you, this is what i want, please forgive me, then that would show a certain measure of perhaps belated gallant trii guess. but, it seems it took him a while to decide he didn't want his freedom. and there are various conjectures as to why.

there was some thought, well, if he did divorce, lucy would never marry him because lawssy was a catholic, yeah, maybe. there was certainly a consideration if he did get a divorce he could kiss his political career good-bye. no one had ever heard of a divorced president. in fact, do you know how many divorced presidents we've had until now? and do you know -- yes, one. do you know who that was? ronald reagan. family values was important and still is. but the clincher seems to have been that sara weighed in and this sort of decision was not made just between franklin and eleanor. sara is the third pole of this, third vertex of this triangle. sara who inherited family fortune from her husband, and was doling it out month by month to franklin, let franklin know that if he left eleanor, he would be

cut off without a cent. franklin thinks about this, says, okay, we're sticking together. but eleanor, eleanor lays down two conditions. number one. the first condition is, that franklin will never see lucy again. reasonable enough. he can hardly argue with this. although, as it turns out he eventually slips around this one a little bit, and, if we get there i will tell you more about that. the second condition, the second condition, i want you to decide whether this is strange, problematic or what. the second condition is, that franklin and eleanor will no longer cohabit as husband and wife. no more sex. that's it. okay. now, franklin is, at this

point, 37 years old. how does he interpret this? i don't know. i don't know. he never wrote this down. how would you interpret it? if you were in franklin's position? did eleanor seriously think that franklin was going to be celibate for the rest of his life? i don't know. eleanor could be very insightful in certain aspects of life, but, just as obtuse as can be in other aspects of life. okay. now, at this point, at this point, you might be thinking, and i certainly was, kind of at this stage of my exploration of this relationship, that, that franklin, he really did not handle himself well. you write a biography with the name of franklin roosevelt on the cover, i certainly am not an apologist for franklin roosevelt, and i wasn't, i can't say i was even rooting

for franklin roosevelt to do the right thing but in a situation as fraught as this i think that, it's hard not to ascribe responsibility, even blame to one party in this relationship, and it seems to be franklin was the one who strayed and so, it's his fault, and maybe he has to live with the consequences. but the story turns out to be more complicated than that. because, it is entirely possible, and i can't say it is more than possible but i will give you a little bit of information so you can decide whether it is more than possible. it is entirely possible that eleanor had already suspended sexual relations with franklin. in those days, contraception was, available for a certain class of people who were willing to seek it out, who were frank enough to deal with these kinds of issues openly, and eleanor was definitely not one of those types of people.

so, it's entirely possible that when eleanor said, six kids is enough. what she was also saying was, that's enough sex. i'll give you a bit of evidence. anna, the daughter, recalls that on her, on the night before her wedding, so, she is getting prepared, she is going to be married, i should say her first wedding. i think she was married four times. this is, may or may not, tell you something about the dysfunction of the eleano eleanor-franklin marital relationship that of the five surviving children, i think they had a total of something like 20 marriages. anyway, a lot. but, on the eve of her first wedding, eleanor told anna, and this stuck in anna's memory well enough that she repeated it years later, eleanor says, my dear, you must remember that sex is

something that must be endured. okay. make of that what you will. anyhow, so, franklin and eleanor, continued to be married. they don't share a bedroom. and before long they don't even share a house. how many of you, have any of you been to hyde park new york to the roosevelt library there? one of the interesting things is there is this big house that franklin lived in when he was in hyde park and his mother was there and kids were stay there. then 2 1/2 miles away at the extreme other end of the property, there is eleanor's house. and these where she spent most of her time. she said that it was, that he, that she couldn't feel comfortable living in her mother-in-law's home. i can certainly understand that. i don't think i would have liked to live with sara roosevelt either. but that was part of it. then, okay, now perhaps more of this will come up in furs

questioning. what have i got two questions so far and burned through nearly an hour. but the next big thing, the real crisis, the thing that converts franklin roosevelt to this, i'm going to call him the champion of ordinary americans is, something that seemed to befall him really, really out of the blue. in 1921, in the summer of 1921 franklin roosevelt contracted polio. it was almost unheard of for an adult to contract polio. the common name for the disease in those days was infantile paralysis. and, for 39-year-old franklin roosevelt to come down with polio was so striking, that it was, well, the in the first place it was front-page news. this i mentioned partly to correct a common misconception that the american public didn't know that franklin roosevelt had polio. as i say it was reported on the front page of "the new york times." it was repeated in newspapers all over the

country. roosevelt received mail from people all over the place who heard about his illness and wished him well or shared their experiences. in many cases, these were people who had contracted polio as children, and then were remarking on the fact, here is this famous public figure. by now he was quite famous. he had in 1920, this is 1921 at age of 39 he contracts polio, in 1920 after seven and a half years assistant secretary of navy under the wilson administration he was nominated for vice president on the democratic ticket. although the ticket lost very badly, none of the blame landed on franklin roosevelt. in fact roosevelt was seen as the stronger member of the ticket. and he was widely spoken of as an obvious candidate for the republican nomination for president in 1924. did i say, for the democrats, sorry.

democratic nominee for president in 1924. roosevelt instead contracts polio and he spends the next six years trying to rehabilitate himself. the rehabilitation and its failure to do much good at all, had some important consequences for roosevelt personally and for american perceptions of roosevelt. personally roosevelt, this child of privilege, this kid to whom everything had been give, understood, came to understand very painfully, that as much as you've been given it can all be taken away in a moment. it can all disappear through no fault of your own. this is critical because when the depression hits, all sorts of americans discover that they have been laid off. they have lost their jobs. their nest eggs, bank savings, disappear through no fault of their own. it was very difficult for someone like herbert hoover to understand that, to feel that. herbert hoover who was president at the time, was probably the best example in

modern american history of a self-made man. himself was orphan. he pulled himself up by his boot straps. made himself a millionaire and became president of the united states. and he had that view that a lot of self-made individuals have that if i could make it, other people can make it. and if they don't make it, it means they didn't work as hard as i did, maybe not as smart as i am. they often have a hard time understanding, well, if things, if the dice had been rolled a little bit differently you wouldn't be where you are today. roosevelt probably couldn't have understood before he came down with polio, which i didn't specify, left him without the use of his legs for the rest of his life. he could stand but only with heavy steel braces that locked his knees into place. i did, i said, that it was no secret that roosevelt had had polio. the secret, and the object of something of a cover-up was that he never regained the use of his legs. he exaggerated the extent of

his recovery. and i won't say that the media of his day, primarily newspapers but eventually news reels, they conspired in this but there was a greater sense in those days that an individual's, even a public figure's private life is his private life. and unless it's clear that it impacts his public responsibilities, then they just won't report it. roosevelt was able to persuade photographers, for example, not to shoot him a picture, not shoot a picture of him in his wheelchair, despite the fact he spent most of his day in a wheelchair. at roosevelt library where i did most of the research for the book, there are something like 10,000 photographs, i don't swear to have gone through all 10,000 but i went through thousands of them and, i ran across one that shows roosevelt in his wheelchair and it is in the book. i'm told there is one other one. but that is it. the other ones simply

weren't taken or on rare occasion when a photographer didn't understand the rules of the game, then, somebody on the secret service simply came up and took camera or took the film or the plates. so roosevelt came to understand that bad things can happen to people without their doing at all. it's just something that happens. and this was important in sort of, i guess you could say, really without exaggerating too much, it really deepened his soul and character in a way that would have been hard to have accomplished otherwise. but even more important, i suppose, politically, for roosevelt's fortunes, it made roosevelt someone that ordinary americans could identify with. i think we've seen in the recent election, you see this again and again, in presidential elections, people vote for their candidate for president, partly based on policies but at least as much based on some kind of sense of

identification. this person captures something about my life. this person understands something about me. this person is in some basic way, like me. before franklin roosevelt came down with polio, before he became disabled, it was impossible for almost, for 98% of americans to say, this man is like me. but after this, people could say, this man has suffered. this man knows what hardship is like. this man understands what life is like for the rest of us. and this connection, this emotional connection, roosevelt understood them in a way he couldn't have before, and they understood roosevelt or they identified with roosevelt in a way they couldn't have before. okay. stop there. i will ask for other questions. and i promise not to answer these at half an hour's length. yes? >> so, all the roosevelts who do you admire the most? >> of all the roosevelts, who do i admire most? at the moment i'm pitching a

book on franklin roosevelt. that's my answer. [laughter] no. actually, no, let me, elaborate on that a little bit. as, as an author and a historian, i don't, i really try to avoided a miring, liking, disliking admiring disapproving of my characters. what i really try to get at is, the story, the importance to history. so i will tell you this. that in terms of presidential greatness, here i'm going to speak about greatness in having a large impact on america and on the world, i would say that franklin roosevelt clearly outstrips theodore roosevelt. now this doesn't imply, necessarily, that i approve of roosevelt's policies, because whether you like the new deal or not, the new deal transformed american life. you may think this was the worst thing that happened to

the united states but it would be difficult to argue with the fact that roosevelt was exceedingly important and transformative in making sure the new deal came to pass. but in terms of, maybe the question might be rephrased which one would i like to spend time with? who would be the easier one to get along with? that's a tough one because theodore roosevelt was one of these people, i alluded to this earlier when i said he wanted to be the center of attention, he really did want to be the center of attention. i wrote about theodore roosevelt and theodore roosevelt died at age of 60, i had written, turns out, just, by chance, that the two books my theodore roosevelt book and my franklin roosevelt book are almost exactly the same length. this one's skinnier because the publisher used thinner paper. theodore roosevelt died at the age of 60, and i was glad when he died because he had worn me out. he never slowed down from the time he was 12 years old until he died. this is one of the reasons

that, at a relatively, 60 years old, you got this great big full life. franklin roosevelt died at the age of 62 and, he, he also had a very full life. he would have been a much easier person to be around because he didn't demand so much of the people around him. theodore roosevelt, henry adams once said, after a lunch with theodore roosevelt, he had to come home and feel that, he felt that he had to wring the theodore roosevelt out of his clothes. with franklin roosevelt it wasn't that way. with franklin roosevelt you would have felt that you were in the company of somebody who was very charming, someone who was also, very self-centered, self-centered both in the sense of really, paying attention to what was going to work for him, but also self-centered in a way that made you know he didn't need other people. one of the things that made

it difficult to get to know franklin roosevelt was that he had, well, he had a couple of people you could call, close friend as an adult. louis howe, his first political mentor and right-hand man for 25 years was one. louis howe was the last person who could sort of tell franklin roosevelt he was being an ass and get away with it. but the other people that came around roosevelt, it was interesting, he had almost no male friends. but he had a lot of women friends. and, this was part of, this is one of the things that drew him to lucy mercer, who by the way reenters of the picture at end of franklin roosevelt's life. behind eleanor's back, i don't know whether i should but or and, with the help of anna roosevelt, the daughter, who by this time for years and years had thought that her mother had been the

wronged party in the franklin-lucy relationship. but came to understand that franklin needed something, something personal, just sort of, a sympathetic ear, a warm voice, that eleanor couldn't or wouldn't give him. and so he did have a number of, i hesitate to say, they were women friends. they were almost women acolytes. these are women quite content to bask in the glow of franklin roosevelt. so that is the best i can come up with an answer. andrew, did you have a question? >> yes. what would you say politically speaking was fdr's greatest mistake? >> franklin roosevelt's greatest mistake. there were two he made in fairly rapid succession. this after his overwhelming reelection in 1936. he was elected by a very large margin until 1932, primarily with the hope that he would end the depression. the depression continued. in 1936, he was reelected by

an even larger margin. what explains this? well, he certainly was making a start on not exactly ending the depression but alleviating the symptoms of the depression, and, it was, it is accounted for by, an astonishing emotional bond that developed between roosevelt and the american people. they came to believe that he was their man in washington. so they reelected him overwhelmingly and roosevelt begins to believe he can do no wrong. it is a classic case of hub brings. he tries to do two things. term of art at time he tries to pack the supreme court. the supreme court has recently overruled important elements of the new deal. and roosevelt is irate that these conservative justices, all of them appointed by his republican predecessors have managed to block, not only his will, but the will of the people, as clearly expressed in his election

and reelection. so, roosevelt, as believer in democracy has to figure out how can i do this? how can we let these nine, actually there were seven, really five, really conservative justice, how can they be allowed to block the will of the people? he comes up with this idea of expanding number of judges on the court which was not quite as revolutionary as it might sound because in roosevelt's living memory number of justice on the court gone up and down several times. the fact that you add a few more justices that didn't exactly fly in the face of historical precedent. . .

>> this might sound rather odd, but it's not so strange if you can remember or know, what the democratic party was made up in the 1930s. the democratic party for the previous 60 years, well, since the end of the civil war, had been a coalition of big city ethnics are basically, the big city bosses and very conservative, reactionary and not too fond of it, white

supremacist southerners. and roosevelt managed to bring them together into this coalition that elected him once and then again it because of roosevelt overwhelming popularity, the southern conservative went along, grudgingly, with the early measures of the new deal. but they were never very happy about it. when roosevelt was elected a second time and he became to everyone's light of thinking a lame duck they began to oppose him and he couldn't get anything more passed. he couldn't get anything more progressive passed the senate. and so he decided he was going, again this was a term that was used, he was going to purge the conservatives in the senate. etoys with the idea of creating a new party. he wanted to bring together the liberals and the republican party, and the liberals from the democratic party into this new either called liberal party or progressiprogressive party

ticket might've been called the democratic party but it was going to be a different party and let all the conservatives go. so he campaigned against some of these well entrenched southern conservatives. and he lost. he encourage them. and so as of the end of 1938, it looked as though rooseveltsecond term is going to be as dismal as most second terms are. and if not for a remarkable external, you could call it a historical accident, in the sense of the bearing no relationship to internal american politics, roosevelt would have left office at the beginning of 1941. and i contend that the new deal, what was left of the new deal would have been in grave jeopardy. to give you the best example. social security was passed in 1935. sosa sugared is unemployment insurance and old age insurance. as of 1939, almost nobody was getting anything out of the social security. people were putting money in but this is the way it is, we all pay for years and years and then we retire later. but as of 1939 almost nobody was

getting money out. so it would have been an easy matter if roosevelt had been replaced by a republican after the 1940 election to dismantle social security. that would have been that. this historical accident i talked about was the second world war which made it possible for roosevelt to run for a third term. it was elected not on the bases of support for the new deal but because americans believe it was a bad policy to change courses in midstream. a result of this was about the new deal got not just for years more, not just a fact not even eight years more because harry truman pulled an upset victory in 1948. until 1953 before the new deal was seriously challenged by which time there were tens of millions of americans who were receiving social security checks. they were getting money out of this system. and at that point even dwight eisenhower, a very conservative republican said we cannot touch a socialist you care to. has been built in the fabric of american expectation. anybody who goes after social security is a political idiot.

did that answer question? i think i did. in the back. >> i can repeat the question. >> at what point in his life was there sort of this capitulation to his heritage? because of the formidable instincts surrounded him and also comparing roosevelt alpha male path to the white house, was he always on track to be a democrat or a liberal? >> actually, yes, he was always on track to be a democrat. most of the republicans were democrat. the exception really is a theodore who became a republican by virtue of, well, some of the members of the family had been republicans. but the main reason was theodore roosevelt grew up during the civil war, and for him, the

democratic party was a party of rebellion. he also grew up in new york city. and the democratic party was the party of twigged, the most notorious corrupt political machine in the united states. so theodore roosevelt should have been a democrat. in fact, he wound up a republican. but he was as progressive on certain issues as franklin roosevelt. yes, in the way back. [inaudible] i was one of what you could tell me about their relationship? >> and he also won a pulitzer prize for his approval biography. robert sherwood was a speechwriter. robert sherwood was harry hopkins sort of the closest confidante and government. that got him quite close to

franklin roosevelt as well because during -- well, starting about 1940 hopkins became roosevelt right hand man. roosevelt needed a right hand man. louis howe died in 1936. and billy hou never had the kind of stature that hopkins would develop. and hopkins in fact allowed himself to think that he might, that roosevelt might be grooming him for the presidency in 1940. roosevelt let a number of people think that he might be grooming them, but hopkins became roosevelt indispensable envoy during the second world war. so he traveled to talk to churchill. he traveled to talk to stalin. and hopkins was quite free, and although he cheered his papers with sherwood. sherwood was a brilliant writer. and his book is exceedingly good. in fact, it's one of the most important accounts, important sources for what roosevelt was thinking because roosevelt would

talk to hopkins and hopkins would come talk to sherwood or hopkins would write it down in a journal. the sources that i use for the book were the kind of obvious once. presidential papers, correspondence and the like. but franklin roosevelt didn't reveal himself very much in letters. he never kept a diary. so i had to rely to a greater extent than some of my previous biographies on roosevelt's public i will call them performances. franklin roosevelt understood the politics especially presidential politics was a performance art. at one point or some wells came to the white house. this was an orson welles in his prime, the great actor and director. and roosevelt took him aside and said i want you to know, that you and i are the two finest actors in america. and roosevelt was perfectly serious about this. and if ronald reagan were here,

he can tell you that this doesn't connote necessarily insincerity. anymore than, for example, i don't know, yo-yo ma is insincere by learning how to perform as a vicious in. the presidency is as much a role as it is a office or individual. and roosevelt understood how to perform on this stage. i spent a lot of time reading the transcript of roosevelt's press conferences, and maybe especially after the last seven and a half years, to see someone who loved press conferences, who performed brilliantly at press coverage is. now, i will admit that it was easier for roosevelt and it would be for presidents in the age of television. because roosevelt could say that what i'm about to say is off the record, and so he could bring reporters into his confidence in a way that is simply not possible if you are doing it on television. it becomes much more of a

spectacle. for roosevelt it was, he did these twice a week for 12 years. something like 900 press conferences, and everyone is a kind of high wire act. because roosevelt have to weigh how much he is giving the reporters and how much he has to withhold. and he puts on this show and the reporters crowded into his office. in fact, he is very careful this is going to take place in his office so he knows, and he knows that they know that they are on his turf. therefore they have to play by his rule. he asks them questions. he tips his hand in a way that previous presidents had not. he doesn't force the business about some things are for background, somethings are off the record, some things are for direct attribution. but just reading these you can see roosevelt reveling in this kind of performance. he loved in the same way as a great actors love to go on stage. i once heard an interview that

an actor, and i think it was a dual gray, gave somebody who asked a question i suppose maybe early, got maybe commonly asked among actors and that is do you ever suffer stage fright? and his actor, as i say i think it was joe gray, and maybe some of you have heard this, please let me know so i can nail this down. i know what he said was stage fright, no. what i suffer is life right. and what he was saying was that he felt freer onstage than in his personal life. and in certain respects i think that applies to roosevelt. so now i forget what your question was but i hope i answered it. there you go. okay. i answered that part, i think. yes. >> we hear a term now like traitor to his class, that kind of grates against modern sensibility. i don't think we've had a prominent politician in this country in the last 50 years that even acknowledges that there is such a thing as class

in this country. was this just a roosevelt era artifact? when did it go away? >> when did it go away? harry truman did very much the same thing. i don't remember a president after truman who did it. and identified his enemies and made the most of them. actually i guess, no, there were different kind of enemies. so republicans in particular have been railing against what, secular humanism, and the liberal media. so every president, every effective political leader chooses enemies. you are going to have enemies, and if you can choose enemies carefully and should graciously did you get a lot of mileage out of your enemies. roosevelt quite clearly engaged in something that comes really close to class warfare where he talked about the wealthy of america, adding interest only of their own class, who feather

their own nest and didn't care anything about the rest of the country. so roosevelt made this distinction between the wealthy view and the ordinary mini. and he made clear that he was on the side of the ordinary many. well, he could do the numbers as well as anybody else, and if you dare with a few to a small enough group you're going to forge to alienate 10% of the population that i was thinking of this when barack obama talked about if you make less than $250,000, your taxes are going to be cut. will presumably the people who make more than $250,000 are going to be upset about this. big deal. how many make more than that? not enough to sway an election. roosevelt was very good at picking his enemy. i will say that roosevelt also was very good when he would criticize republicans. he never criticized republicans. he criticized republican leaders, and that way he can say it's just those bad guys in office. because he was according to a

vote of ordinary republicans. so he understood the power of words. he understood the power of enemy. and when he decided to his enemies where he went after them. i will take one more question because the last thing i want is for people to feel they have to leave before they have time to buy a book. [laughter] one more question. anybody? >> the three presidents that you have gone, you might have after this question already, but they make this incredibly controversial decisions through their presidency, and i would just think would alienate anybody on tv. you have like hannity and more just going nuts. but it seems like they always had is not the approval at least somewhat of a support of the people during the time. is there anything all three of those folks you see had in common? >> the three presidents, and/or jackson, theodore roosevelt and franklin roosevelt, they all understood that the presidency

is unique in american politics. it is the only office for which every voter in the united states potentially can go. a senator, a governor has a constituency that is much more narrowly defined. but a president can say quite convincingly i am the representative of the people. and figures of congress can't say this. i was talking about this to my undergraduate class today. what advice would franklin roosevelt give barack obama. and so they suggested and i agree with is entirely that one of the things he must do is to make clear that he is the leader of the democratic party and not nancy pelosi, not harry reid. because he can say, in this last election, everybody could go for me. on the one who represents the whole country. and the presidents who were successful and the ones you mention, were the ones who can credibly make that claim. i speak for the people as a whole. it would have been very difficult for war and harding to make that claim, for herbert hoover to make that