my twin -- my twins are reading it. jann know when to ethiopia with care on a trip there. she wanted to read that especially around her trip. >> what is the present rating? >> he is reading in excellent >> a new biography that i'm anxious to get my hands on as soon as he finishes -- my >> host: and we just got that oo booktv, and can we will be covering that at some point. laura bush is the author ofna "spoken from the heart." oh, and by the way, she was first lady for eight years as well. [laughter] thank you for being here. >> guest: thank you so much. thank you for covering the national book festival. >> garland tucker iii recounts the 1924 general election between john davis and calvin coolidge, the last time -- according to the author -- that both parties fielded conservative candidates.

mr. tucker discusses his book at the john locke foundation in raleigh, north carolina. this program is about an hour. [applause] >> thank you very much and especially to the john locke foundation for inviting me today. i've been looking forward to this. they were very generous in giving me a lot of latitude as to what i talked about today, and what i'd like to do is try to answer the question that i've been getting a lot or ever since the book came out. as most of you all know, this is my first attempt and probably only attempt at writing a book, and so lots of people have asked me, well, why did you write it or what did you hope to accomplish with this book, so that's what i'm going to try to answer today. as i thought about it, there are really three reasons for my writing the book or i would sort of distill it down to three reasons, and the first two

reasons were thoughts or reasons that i had in mind when i started, and the third one interestingly enough is one that i sort of discovered after i'd gotten into trying to write the book, so i'm going to go through them in sequence. the first reason is to, that i had in mind, was to reevaluate the fiscal policies of the 1920s, and i don't know -- some of you, looking around the room, some of you are young enough maybe to have of had a different experience, but a number of you look like you might be my age or so, and if i think back to my college experience, there was very little said about the 1920s. the, my recollection of historical treatment of the 1920s when i was in college was that it was just a period that was kind of sandwiched in between woodrow wilson and

franklin roosevelt and nothing much happened in between or certainly nothing worthy of much comment. and i think that was generally the historical per perception that was very prevalent. calvin coolidge has had a biographer named robert sew bell who wrote a book on coolidge in the 1990s, and he made this comment which i think sums up very well the historical, the typical historical perspective. sobel wrote that few presidents in if all american history had as many act lites among intellectuals as did woodrow wilson. arthur schlesinger jr. was an ardent admirer of wilson's who he saw as a president who played john the baptist for franklin d. roosevelt. schlesinger was one of those who helped fashion this legend. in the age of roosevelt in which

schlesinger presented this thesis, he discussed, quote, the coming of the republicans as though they were barbarians sacking rome. that's the perception that schlesinger put out there for the 1920s, and he was not alone in the widely-acclaimed book, "the pocket history of the united states," alan nevins and henry steele wrote that the isle isle -- idealism of the era was in the past, the passion for humanitarianism was in the future and the decade of the '20s was dull, bourgeois and ruthless. that doesn't sound very excite, and if you were a student back in those days and heard that, you probably never thought about much about studying the '20s. i certainly didn't and took all that at face value.

but interestingly, this really began to change among historians. i think the biggest change was in the 1980s when reagan was elected. there was, among conservative intellectuals and economists, there was the rediscovery of tax cuts and what came to be known as supply-side economics, the whole idea of smaller government and a new group of historians emerged who have taken that, if you will, revisionist view of the 1920s. and among those were paul johnson, amity shlaes, burton folsom and some others. and johnson has written that the truth is the '20s was the most fortunate decade in american history. he also called coolidge the most internally-consistent and single-minded of american presidents. and he concluded that coolidge prosperity was huge, real, widespread, and it showed that

the concept of property-owning democracy can be realized. if you view the '20s through this prism, you can recognize it as a remarkable period of economic growth, an affirmation of our basic conservative values and an emphasis on individual freedom and responsibility. in 1981 it certainly came as a shock to most americans and certainly to almost every historian when ronald reagan retrieved the portrait of calvin coolidge from storage and symbolically installed it in the white house cabinet room. that was a very tangible bit of evidence that a reappraisal of the 1920s and coolidge was going on, at least in the white house. now, the backdrop for looking at the 1920s, i think, really needs to start with a history of

progressivism which started in the late 1800s in the united states and reached, i guess, as historians would argue it reached it pinnacle in be 1912 with the election of 1912 which has been pretty widely called the high tide of progressivism. if you recall 1912, woodrow wilson was running as a strong progressive dominated by the democrats, the republicans had a big fight. teddy roosevelt failed to get the nomination, bolted, ran as a pure progressive, went farther left than he had ever gone before to get to the left of wilson, and then taft was left scurrying as hard as he could to try to sound progressive and not be left out. so you had two very strong progressives and a third would-be progressive all running in that election. and the result was wilson, of course, was elected and adopted

a very progressive policy. the combination of his domestic policy which he called the new freedom and world war i resulted in, i guess, two very tangible things; the newly-installed income tax which was installed at 7%, to do at 77% at the end of world war i just a few, six years after it had started, and there had also been a huge increase in government intervention and regulation and intrusion into the private market. as country came out of the post-war period and entered the 1920s, the economy experienced a very severe recession, the recessioning of 1919 and 1920. and it's interesting to look back at that given that we're in the midst of such a time now.

and unemployment was over 20%. as i've mentioned, income tax rates, the top rate was over 77%. gnp was falling rapidly, and there were a host of labor strikes, a lot of labor unrest. and as the country went into the 1920 election, the country made a real swing to the right. it repudiated the progressivism of wilson and elected a very conservative republican ticket which was composed of harding nominated for president and calvin coolidge for vice president. frederick louis allen only yesterday has characterized it like this, he said, the nation was spiritually tired at the end of world war i, wearied by the excitement of the war and the nervous tension of the big red scare, they hoped for quiet and healing. they were sick of wilson and his

talk of america's duty to humanity, callous to political idealism, they hoped for a chance to just pursue their private affairs without government interference. and the result was a gop landslide. during this campaign calvin coolidge, the vice presidential candidate, made this statement, very succinct statement, but it resonated with the people. he said, in a free republic a great government is the product of a great people. they will look to themselves rather than to the government for success. this became a theme of that campaign, and the result was the republicans won a landslide victory. against the backdrop of this severe recession, harding came into office, and contrary to the sort of the historical perspective that we normally have of harding, he, i think

everyone would agree that he appointed some very good -- he made some very good appointments to his cabinet. charles evans hughes was his secretary of state, and most importantly, andrew mellon was his secretary of the treasury. and mellon began what would become almost a ten-year reign as secretary of treasury. in fact, it was said that three presidents served under andrew mellon, and that was probably a pretty good picture of the 1920s. and he began systematically to lower taxes, to propose to congress that they lower taxes, and this policy of reduced domestic spending in conjunction with lower taxes began to take hold. unemployment started to decline, ultimately declined to around 5%. and during the period of the eight years of the

harding/coolidge presidency, gnp grew at an astounding annual rate of 4.5%, an annual rate per year of 4.5%. now, unlike 40 years ago when i was in college, there's finally a debate. there hasn't been any conclusion among historians, but they're, i think everyone who reads any history these days would agree that there is a good debate going. and the real question about the 1920s is, was it an idyllic period in american history, in arcadia, if you will, or was it the babylon that it's been characterized as by so many historians? in addition to what schlessinger and neff vince and cominger wrote, william alan white

identified coolidge unforget my in his book "the puritan in babylon," effete intellectuals belittle the 1920s and called it a drunken fiesta. scott fitzgerald called it the greatest, gaudiest spree in history. they saw the great coolidge prosperity at ephemeral, and they were repulse r pulsed by what they saw -- repulsed by what they saw as intellectual shallowness. in stark contrast to this, the other historians that i've mentioned such as johnson have hailed the decade as the last arcadia. what the '20s demonstrates was the relative speed with which industrial productivity could transform luxuries into necessities and spread them down the class pyramid. i mean, what johnson recognized in the 1920s was that there was an economic tide sweeping across the country that

permeated the lower income sector of the economy and was a classic case of a rising tide raises all boats. the economic facts, if you look at them, will indicate that prosperity was, indeed, more widespread and more widely distributed than at any time in american history up until this point. coolidge prosperity was, indeed, real, but it wasn't permanent. and i think real realistically history, any kind of economic history would tell you that no prosperity is every permanent, so to blame the 1920s for the 1930s, while that's a position that many historians have taken, most economists -- even liberal economists like galbraith -- have said that's really an unfair characterization, that you really cannot make that link and say, well, the '30s were

so terrible, it must have been caused by the '20s. hopefully, the book will add to this revisionist look at the 1920s and cause readers to re-examine what has been sort of a prevalent view. and now there are plenty of other good writingings on this, so i hope this will become a part of it. but the second reason that i wrote the book was the two men, coolidge and davis, and the focus of the book is, i think, was mentioned in the introduction for those of you who haven't read it is the 1924 election. and so the two major candidates, calvin coolidge and john davis -- that working all right? sound like it's echoing a little bit. the two candidates were calvin coolidge and john davis, and

it's interesting to look at the similarities of these two men. while they were very different personalities as we'll see this a minute -- in a minute, both were successful politicians, both emerged politically in the early progressive era, both became increasingly conservative, both exemplified great integrity and personal ethics, and both reflected the best qualities of their respective regions. coolidge was from new england, and and davis was from the south. davis was a democrat who was dedicated to small government, states' rights, individual freedom and free trade, very much in the tradition of jefferson. and coolidge was a conservative republican who shared many of these same jeffersonian ideas of limited government and individual freedom. it's interesting that in 1924 the old progressive warhorse,

william jennings bryan, observed at the democratic convention in 1924 that davis was a man of fine character, but he added with disgust, so is mr. coolidge, there's just no difference between them. i think that's, that pretty well summed up how these two men stood in their day. so let's take a quick look at coolidge. he was a product of his era, of his region, the new england region, and he was very fond of quoting a new new england phrase which sounds to me like it could have been a southern phrase too. the saying was that the education of every man begins two to three generations before he's born. and that was certainly true of calvin coolidge. he was absolutely a product of new england. he often bothed that no coolidge ever went west, and what he

meant by that was that as tough a place as vermont is to earn a living, the coolidges stayed right there and department make any excuses -- didn't make any excuses and made a go of it. and i think in summary of coolidge, it's fair to say that -- and one of the great things about coolidge was that he really was what he appeared. he really was a it is a -- taciturn, thrifty, hard working, unpretentious new england puritan, that's exactly what he was, and that's how he came across. and interestingly, the american people really responded to him. you would think that he would have a hard time connecting with the public, but the opposite was the case. he had risen steadily in massachusetts from the local level of politics up to the

state legislature, lieutenant governor, was elected governor in 1918. in his whole career, only lost one of i think it was 18 elections, and that was for the school board. he was elected governor in 1918, and in 1919 one event in massachusetts catapulted him overnight onto the national stage. and it was the very famous boston police strike. the police force in boston went out on strike, and this was in the middle of the whole red scare. the country was on edge, concerned about bolshevism coming in and all kinds of labor unrest. and what happened in the police strike was very instructive and predictive of what was to come in coolidge's career. he worked very hard to avert the

strike and was almost successful. at the last minute, the national afl leaders came in and sort of bolstered the local union, and they came to a showdown, and a strike was finally called. and coolidge issued a very famous statement that, quote, there is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anytime, anywhere. and the strike was broken virtually overnight, and the public opinion swung in massachusetts and all over the country, and coolidge really became a national figure. as a result of that, he came on the national stage, and i want to read just a few excerpts from a, i think, an extremely interesting report. the new york world newspaper sent a reporter up to boston to interview coolidge right after

the police strike, and this reporter, i think, nailed calvin coolidge as well as anybody has ever, that i've ever seen describe him. and here's what he wrote. he said, to one who has never seen governor coolidge of massachusetts, he is a spings or an enigma. he talks little. it is his silences which seem to speak loudest, for when one ventures to put a question to him, the answer comes back in a tightening of the governor's lean face and the closing of his lips. he has a lean and hungry look, and the policemen's union and labor bureau of boston discovered that such men are dangerous. [laughter] that was probably true. [laughter] contrary to the accepted characteristics of the usual sort of politicians, cal coolidge seldom smiles, hardly ever does any handshaking and has a reputation that his word is as good as gold. i think that's a good, a very

good summary of coolidge. it also gives a flavor of the image he presented which, again, i think was reality of absolute integrity. he was willing to, if you will, talk straight to the people of massachusetts. he didn't sugar coat anything, he vetoed any bill that he thought was not going to be good for the state. his advisers told him if he tried to break the police strike, it was the end of his political career. he agreed, he thought it was, but he said, we've still got to break the strike. and that was true of his whole career as president. and interestingly, it just resonated very well with the american people. if you were to come up with a list of characteristics that any good politician needs to have or what we think they need to have, coolidge wouldn't have even been

considered. but the fact was that he remained very popular throughout his term. with, with the breaking of the police strike in 19, in 1919, coolidge entering the national arena, he was moved very quickly into a presidential contender in 1920, but when harding was nominated, then coolidge was very quickly selected as vice president and entered office as vice president under harding. and, again, contrary to our popular perception of harding, the harding administration was showing real progress in getting the country back on the right track. the recession was basically over by 1922, and by the summer of

1923 harding was extremely popular. headed west on a vacation, the coolidges went up to vermont for a vacation, and harding very unexpectedly -- totally unexpectedly -- died out in san francisco, and there was a great outpouring of grief from the american people. there were stories in "the new york times," believe it or not, about how this was the greatest outpouring of grief since lincoln's death, and anyway, coolidge came in to office under these unfortunate circumstances with harding's death. but there was a real question about whether coolidge would be able to bring the party together, and he was able to do that in a way and in a very short time period that i think showed what a masterful politician he was. he, by the time the republicans

met in convention the next summer, 1924 in cleveland, it was virtually assured that coolidge would be nominated. he had unified the party, he had been able to hold most of the progressive wing within the party but had established his own credentials as a conservative. and it turned out to be one of the most, in fact, it was billed as the most boring convention in american this -- history which suited the republicans just fine. they nominated coolidge by acclimation, and the campaign was launched from there. i'll talk in a minute went we get -- when we get to davis about how the opposite was true for the democrats. but coolidge did a masterful job of getting ready for the election. he entered the president -- the result of the campaign in 1924

was that coolidge, probably without question, had been dealt a winning hand, but i think you'd have to say, also, in looking at it that he certainly played it flawlessly, and the result was that he won a resounding victory. coolidge's vote, popular vote, was approximately 53 or 4%, and davis who was the democrat garnered about 30%. and then the progressive third-party candidate got between 16 and 17%, and the title of the book comes from the fact that this was the last time both parties nominated a conservative. and if you look at it this that context, 83 or so percent of the popular vote went to the two conservative candidates.

very much in a summary, coolidge came in 1925 with huge popularity, and he immediately implemented, began a continuation of harding's policies. he and mellon went to the congress for further tax cuts, further reductions in spending. these were -- he was able to secure these because the republican majorities in the congress, and he stayed very much on this same message with the american people. the result was the economy performed amazingly during that period, and probably the most amazing thing from a political standpoint was that he decided voluntarily to ten down, not -- step down, not run for re-election in 1928 when he could have, undoubtedly, been reelected and left while he was still hugely, hugely popular,

something that most politicians don't like to do. a very quick word about davis. if coolidge has been given very little credit as a president, then i think it's safe to say that davis has been shamefully ignored as a candidate. when you mention john w. davis today, most people have a very blank expression. they don't really know who he was or don't know anything about him. and i'm sorry i don't have more time today to fill in some of those gaps, but you'll just, hopefully, have to read the book. but davis was very much a product of his region. he was from the south. he entered politics very much -- he was very much put forward by his peers. he didn't view himself as a real politician. he was elected to congress many 1910 -- in 1910 and 1912, and woodrow wilson picked him as his

solicitor general, the government's voice before the supreme court. and it was, this was a very important milestone in davis' career. he, he argued seven -- 60-some cases as solicitor general which was more than any other solicitor general had argued personally, and it was during this time that he really secured his reputation as what was to become the foremost judicial advocate, really, in the united states by the time the '30s and '40s rolled around. it's interesting to read the comments. virtually every supreme court justice who was on the court at that time urged wilson to appoint davis to the supreme court. he was, there were comments like one of the supreme court justices said that it was

impossible to be impartial when davis was arguing a case. that he, his ability to present a case was just legendary, and it was, again, during this period that his reputation was really established. in 1918 he was offered the opportunity to go to england as the ambassador to great britain and served two years there, a very successful two-year term where he was the u.s. voice in the post-world war i period. i'll read you just a couple of things that i think will give you a flavor for this. he developed some lifelong friendships with people like churchill and lord halifax and other english leaders. the english were quick to give him their friendship and to share with him their private

views on the important issues of the day. it was certainly no small compliment when george v, king george v said john davis was the most perfect gentleman i've ever met. not surprisingly, davis reciprocated this, this english view with an unstinting admiration for the british people and the british empire, and it was during this two-year period that it very much influenced his thinking as an international, or his foreign policy views which were to be important in the '24 election. davis came back with the 1920 election and woodrow will soften's leaving and harding coming in this, davis retired as ambassador to england, came back to the u.s., and i think this was a refreshing note, he had served in congress, he had served as ambassador. in those days the u.s.

ambassador in this england had to foot a lot of his expenses. and unlike what we see today, davis made absolutely no money. he arrived back in the u.s. in his words, flat broke, and decided he'd better go to work. he joined a major new york law firm, quickly was elected president of the american bar association, became jpmorgan's lawyer, was general counsel for at&t. interestingly, he turned down an appointment to the u.s. supreme court that was offered by harding. by this time taft had become chief justice, and he persuaded harding to consider davis as a nominee, but davis decided he really needed to stay in new york. he was fewly installed at his -- newly installed at his law firm and turned down the opportunity to go to the court. and it was from this vantage point as a major new york lawyer that he was amazingly elected or

nominated as the democratic nominee in 1924. i think to me one of the most interesting chapters in the book, one of my favorites, is the chapter on the 1924 convention in new york which i won't, don't have time to really talk much about today, but i think it's a fascinating story of as the perfect antithesis to the cleveland gop convention, this was the longest, most heated,ty vice i nightmare of a convention that anybody could ever devise. it went for 103 ballots, the two major candidates fought back and forth endlessly, tore themselves, the party, the platform, everything to shreds. finally, at the end of three weeks the party kind of staggered towards a compromise and nominated davis who was very

much a conservative from the conservative wing of the party but acknowledged by both sides to be a candidate who could potentially bring the democrats together. the nomination was pretty worthless by that point, and the result as i mentioned a minute ago were a landslide for coolidge. the, with the, with, with this landslide defeat in 1924, davis went quickly back to new york to his law firm, and while he still had a lot to say in democratic party circles, particularly up through 1932, he was essentially involved in practicing law and developing the firm which by this time had been renamed davis, polk and wardwell and which is still very much a

leading new york law firm. i would, i'd planned but i don't really have time today to read some of the quotes from davis and coolidge, but it's, i think, for a conservative it's very exciting to go back and read what both of these two men had to say in the election of 1924. it's, it's fair to say that there philosophically were very few differences between davis and coolidge, and can that was one of the difficulties davis had in the campaign, it was difficult to -- you couldn't -- he was as conservative as coolidge, but he wasn't more conservative, and so conservatives voted for, probably tended to vote for coolidge. then there was the far right candidate -- i mean, far left, and davis was left kind of in the middle without a way to

distinguish himself. but his, his statements are just classic conservativism very much like coolidge's are, and it's amazing for us to think back at a time when both candidates would make statements like that. again, i would encourage you to look for those quotes if you read the book. after the '24 election, davis played a hand in democratic party politics. in fact, he wrote, was very much involved in writing the platform for the democrats in 1932 which some of you all will know was a very conservative platform. it was the platform on which fdr was elected, it called for balancing the budget, cutting government spending, i mean, davis' hand was all over it. unfortunately, i don't think fdr read it. if he did read it, he certainly disregarded it very quickly. [laughter] and with the direction the new

deal went, davis began to take a very principled stand, and he wound up in 1936 breaking with the democrats. he endorsed landon, it was a front page new york times article. they reprinted his whole speech. and, again, it was a classic defense of conservativism. i wish i had time to read you some of the quotes. he also was involved in forming the liberty league which was a major counterbalance for the new deal during the 1930s and '40s. and probably most importantly he argued a lot of cases before the supreme court, many be of which were is successful -- many of which were successful in striking down new deal legislation. by the time davis ended his career in, shortly before he died -- he died in 1955, but i

think his last case was 1954. he had argued 142 cases before the supreme court, more than any other lawyer except daniel webster. and he was universeally hailed as what was, the term was lawyer's lawyer. he was, without question, the premier advocate before the supreme court is and won some amazing victories. i think the most interesting and significant one was the steel seizure case which davis argued at age 79 before the court, and the court ruled in his favor through harry truman -- threw harry truman out of the steel mills, and it's one of the most important cases in american history. davis was called on to represent the steel industry i which was really quite -- which was really

quite a compliment to anyone period, but to be 79 years old and accomplish this was quite a capstone for his career. so in summary on my second reason for writing the book, it was to introduce these two, two people. both exemplary public servants, and i would hope that even if someone was a diehard liberal, he would appreciate the integrity and ability of these two men. and if one happens to be a conservative, i think you should hold coolidge and davis as genuine heros. now, very briefly and i'll be finished, the third reason for writing the book and, again, this was one that i didn't have in mind when i started, but when i was thinking about looking at the 1920s and was interested in davis and coolidge as men, the point at which their two lives intersect was, obviously, the election of 1924.

that was, i felt it was natural that i would think, gee, that would be a good thing to write. looked around, there was nothing i'd been able to find, nothing's been written on the election of 1924, so that was the reason i decided to write on it, pause the two men -- because of the two men and the policies that were the issues in 1924. but as i got into it, i really concluded that despite the fact that historians haven't recognized it, that it really was in one significant way a watershed election. and that's where the title, "the high tide of american conservativism," came from. it, as i think i've mentioned before, it was the last time that both parties nominated true conservatives. now, we today are lived through -- have lived through roughly 85 years of post-1924 history, and from is 1924 until

today the gop has been the party of the right, and the democratic party's been the party of the left. there have a great quote from,fr in 1924 -- i guess maybe he was governor of new york at that time -- the lesson that he concluded from 1924 and that he gave to the democrats was he said never again should we, i think his words were never again should we wear the livery of the conservative. basically, we've got to go in the other direction. and that's one lesson that i think the democrats have certainly learned. history would show that they haven't gone back on that, and the two parties have stayed pretty much in that mode since 1924. but it's interesting to think that it really wasn't ordained that the republican party would be the conservative party or that the democratic party would be the liberal party. before 1924 each of the two parties had very large

progressive and conservative wings, and they were, there was basically civil war going on in both parties as they vied as to who would control each of the parties. while the democrats nominated the first progressive for president -- that was bryan in 1898 -- it was the republicans who elected the first republican, that was teddy roosevelt in 1904, and it's interesting to think that teddy roosevelt was the leading candidate for the gop nomination in 1920, but he died in 1919. if he'd lived and been nominated and won in 1920, then you could speculate that the democrats might have been the conservative party or the party that took off in a conservative direction. but, of course, that was not what happened, and the result after 1924 was that republican progressives gradually left the

republican party and migrated to the democratic party, and democratic conservatives gradually migrated -- like davis -- gradually migrated to the republican party: finally, let me just leave you with a quote that's at the end of the book where, which would try to give the book maybe a little bit of relevance for today. often the course of economic emergency, the most severe emergencies of the past, economic emergencies of the past century were 1930, 1932 and 1980. conservative policies adopted after 1920 and 1980 were very different from the liberal policies followed after 1932. and the economic results of

those policies was equally dissimilar. in the years immediately following both 1920 and 1980, harding, coolidge and reagan sharply cut taxes and reduced federal spending while roosevelt did the opposite. the 1920s, the 1980s were periods of growth and economic prosperity while the 1930s was a period of prolonged deflation and economic stagnation. coolidge's record and his well-reasoned speeches in support of those 1920 policies and davis' brilliantly-argued rebuttals to new deal liberalism were significant chapters in the history of american conservativism. as america now adopts policies in reaction to what's our first economic emergency of this century, it would do well to examine the 1920s and, i think, to consider the lives,

the words and the warnings of two of america's greatest conservatives, john davis and calvin coolidge. thank you. [applause] and i hope we have, i hope i haven't talked up our question time, but if we've got time for a few, i'd be happy to stay as long as anybody wants to stay. >> i'm not afraid to ask. you didn't mention your connection to davis via w and l and the professor, and i think the audience would be interested in that. >> the way i personally got interested in davis was he was a graduate of washington lee which is where i went, and i had a great friend who was a retired dean there who had known davis for years. and i remember his talking about him, and it was about the time i graduated that the one good biography of davis came out

entitled "lawyer's lawyer." and my friend gave me a copy, and so i read it. and, you know, if i hadn't had that contact, i probably would have never known who davis was. i feel sure i would have never known who he was. >> the 1924 democratic convention is fascinating. i wonder if you could sort of talk a little bit about the personalities involved and whether if one of the other two gentlemen had been nominated -- probably not him as well -- you i would have been able to call this book by the same title. so it's just a real fluke, accident that this is the high tide of american conservativism because of the contentiousness and because davis was, essentially, a third choice. >> yeah. that's a very good question, and again, i think the story of that convention is, i mean, there

actually has been a book written on it called "103 ballots "or something like that. i mean, again, i think it's one of the most interesting chapters in the book. but the nomination was fiercely contended. mackadoo was one of the two candidates. the son-in-law of woodrow wilson. but it's hard for us to relate to the two big issues. the two big issues in the country, sort of the big social issues in the country at that time were the kkk and, interestingly to us in the south, at ha time the -- at that time the kkk had really a national reach. it was midwest, mid atlantic states, new jersey had a big kkk influence, midwest, upper midwest, southwest.

and it was a very hot issue, and the kk -- many of the kkk supporters were also mackadoo supporters, interestingingly enough. and, of course, they were very anti-catholic, so they couldn't stand smith. the other big hot button issue was prohibition, and many of the prohibitionists were also populist progressives, and, of course, al smith was a classic northeastern immigrant but more conservative on some other issues. those were all tangled up, and at the convention in new york, believe it or not, the texas delegation burned a cross out in front of the madison square garden, and according to mackadoo, some of his best prohibitionist supporters were drunk at the end of -- [laughter] and there are all kind of

stories about what went on there. and walter lippman wrote a, i think, a very interesting column about the result of that, and he talked about how that convention brought out the worst in human nature, the worst in a political party, the worst in everything. but somehow when the party almost went over the edge, they somehow pulled themselves together and nominated a great man, john davis. which was an interesting, you know? and i think he made the comment that davis' nomination was more a tribute to his personality, it wasn't sort of your point. it wasn't an indication that the democrats had all of a sudden decided they wanted to be as conservative as davis. they just looked over the edge and said, we'd better get somebody who's a good candidate and who's credible, or we're going to really go over the edge here. he was the best compromise candidate at that point.

>> did your research give you any insight into if coolidge had run and been elected, would he are done things that might have prevented the crash in the beginning of a depression and, of course, he would have continued in 1932 what he would have done after that different than hoover. >> that's certainly a fascinating question. i guess the honest answer is nobody can be 100% sure, but i think something that's very important that most people don't realize is -- i think the popular perception is that there was harding, coolidge and hoover, and hoover's lumped in with harding and coolidge, and, you know, the historical accepted view was that they were all very conservative and probably caused the market crash and the great recession turned into the great depression because of their policies. the fact is that even though

hoover was in the harding administration and the coolidge administration as secretary of commerce, it was a very different kind of republican from either harding or coolidge. he was from the progressive wing of the party. coolidge and mellon couldn't stand him. coolidge called him wonder boy and thought he was a busybody and the joke around washington was that hoover was secretary of commerce and undersecretary of everything else. [laughter] and when hoover was elected in 1928 and the market crash occurred, the monetary policies famously were, you know, all wrong. the fed contracted liquidity instead of expanding it, and the congress passed a huge tariff which demolished foreign trade.

but the thing that's not widely remembered is that coolidge -- i mean, that hoover substantially raised taxes and increased government spending, and, in fact, the deficit, the government spending deficit ballooned in 1932. that was the reason the democrats had a platform that said we want to run on a balanced budget. davis was pushing them to go to the right and, in fact, davis wrote a famous letter to walter lippman where he identifies hoover as the start of the new deal. in his view, hoover was the one who really started the new deal, and roosevelt just picked it up and ran with it with abandon. so it's -- there's no way to know for sure what he would have done, but i think the odds are very high that he would have continued his lower taxation,

lower spending. i don't know what his, you know, whether he could have influenced monetary policy or prevented the increase in the tariff, but if he, if spending and his tax policies i think would have been different from hoover's. >> there are a lot of comparisons between our recession and the one of 1920. can you speak to how unemployment was calculated then as compared to know? i mean, right now it's supposed to be 9.6 or gallup says 10.1, but if you go with u6 it's somewhere around 17 president. 17%. what is more like how they calculate it? >> you know, i really don't know the answer to that. i would wet that there probably -- bet that there probably were some differences, but i know the stated rate did get well over 20%, and it was, it was a very sharp, severe but

short-lived recession. and i know paul johnson has written about it, that it was the last recession that was treated purely from a laissez-faire or purely conservative policy standpoint where taxes and spending were drastically reduced. and the, you know, the interesting thing was that it was is such a short, it was very painful and did what, arguably, a recession should do in the economy, but it was, you know, it wasn't long before the economy had really bounced back. and i think part of that was the fact that they had a secretary of the treasury who was very clear that tax rates are going to be lower next year than they are now, and people were willing to invest, you know, with that

in mind. okay, one more question. anybody else? this y'all have been very patient. thank you. [applause] >> for more information visit emerald book company.com/authors/tucker. >> made for goodness is the name of the book. well known author, desmond tutu, along with his daughter, mpho tutu. ms. tutu, what is this book about? this. >> i think most of what this book is about is that the essential quality of human beings is is that we are good. our essential quality is our goodness. our behavior does not always bear out that essential quality,

but it is my belief and my father's belief that our essential quality is goodness, and everything else is is an aberration. and we relate stories from both our lives, pote of us -- both of us are clergy, both of us are priests and pastors. my father famously shared the truth in reck sill saying -- chaired the truth in reconciliation commission as being in all kinds of places where he has seen all kinds of grief and horror. i have seen the same kinds of grief and horror, but on a more domestic scale in my role as a pastor. so i have a very clear sense of the pain that we can inflict on one another as human beings, but i also know that that is not the essence of our being and that we respond with horror to what is horrific because horror is not

the essence of our being. >> are you also a resident of south africa? >> i'm not. i'm actually a resident of alexandria, virginia. right across the river. >> how long have you lived in the states? >> more than 20 years except that i'm only 23, so -- >> do you miss, do o you miss home? this. >> yes, i do. i miss home a lot, but in my role as the executive directer of the cato institute for prayer and pilgrimage, i get to go home at least once a year taking groups with me on april grimmage. pilgrimage. >> co-author of "made for goodness and why this makes all the difference." her co-author is is the reverend desmond tutu. >> every weekend booktv brings you 48 hour of history, biography and public affairs. here's a portion of one of our programs.

>> hi. who do you think would be the best choice for our next republican candidate for president -- [laughter] with a real chance to win, and even though i think john mccain's a good american, would make the best candidate? >> i, i really -- you know, i have this thing on my show called the duck of the day, and i know my producers are rolling on c-span, and they're going to get me with the duck of the day. i don't know who the best person is right now, but here's my answer: i'm not worried about that yet. i know everyone wants the next, you know, the next reagan to walk in the room, the next, you know, figure who's going to lead us, you know, out of the darkness. i'm not worried about it. i truly believe, and i've been in how many cities? fifteen cities now in just a little over a week and a half. i am thrilled about what i'm

seeing from the ground. it's going to happen the way it's supposed to happen. i have great faith. i have this cross on everybody knows i wear. [applause] i have great faith. that, you know, we're not, we're not an accident, this country. this whole thing didn't happen because of just some series of coincidences, that we had these brilliant men who came together at the constitutional convention and, you know, did this magic. t not magic. it's not magic. we have a destiny to fulfill, and i believe, again, if citizens are engaged -- and it means more than going to speeches. i mean, i'm glad you all came, believe me. it would have been really embarrassing if it were just raymond and randy here and a few other people. [laughter] i'm excited your here. but when you do when you leave here is what matters. what i'm saying to you is, it's happening. people are o