>> well, we are in for a treat right now. we are here to hear richard moe and i know his friends call him dick, to discuss his book, "roosevelt's second act: the election of 1940 and the politics of war." as a preface of the book notes, with the exception of lincoln, no president has been more scrutinized than roosevelt. richard himself wrestles with the question spread at the very beginning of the thousands of roosevelt books, why do we need another one? and the answer is most of what has been written about the fdr presidency is concentrate on the new job is first to terms during world war ii. roosevelt's second act is rooted in the years 1939 and 40 invokes a show plan fdr's decision to defy a run for president return.

moe definitely connects that decision to be out for with democracies from hitler's rampage. the book opens as a fellow writer i will say with a beautiful sentiment. which is franklin delano roosevelt was an unusually found sleeper. [laughter] he then goes on to describe roosevelt being awaken on september 1st in 1939 by a call from the u.s. ambassador of france who told an german troops across the border into poland were dancing rapidly. richard moe's experience served him well in writing this book. he was chief of staff to vice president walter mondale and senior adviser to president jimmy carter and someone that many of us who cover politics over the years got to know. as my colleague, whom i regard

is probably a preeminent political writer in this country said of dick, he has the perspective of a practitioner who understands the complexity of the decision-making and he is talent of the historian for the roosevelt residency in fresh ways. richard was president of the national trust for historic preservation from 1993 until his retirement in 2010. his previous books include the last full measure, the life and death of the first minnesota volunteers and changing places, rebuilding community in the age of sprawl. please give a warm national successful welcome to richard moe. [applause] >> thank you, kevin, very much for the kind introduction it is

a great treat to be here in a special honor to be introduced by kevin merida, who i've admired for so long. let me tell you how honored i am to be at this book festival, the national book festival. this is a unique institution and i feel so privileged to be here. i am a huge fan of the library of congress that they know many of you are and i can't tell you how much i admire and appreciate the job that jim billington and his staff have done and put a nice festival together. feel free to break into applause anytime in this address. [applause] and david rubenstein also felt very much to make this possible. now i have a confession to make. both give david a hand. there we go. [applause] i have a confession to make. i am not a professional historian. as a matter of fact, i did not even study history in college.

that's how bad it was. so you're getting everything you paid for your today. [laughter] but i quickly learned the my wife and i became a voracious reader or he, a student of history ever since. and my fellow mob with history. in particular, i stumbled across what i think is one of the most consequential periods in american history, but one that has been largely ignored by historians. and that is franklin roosevelt's decision to seek an unprecedented third term in 1940. i've always been fascinated by fdr, largely because my two political mentors in minnesota from the hubert humphrey and walter mondale have in turn been hugely influenced by fdr. the democratic labor party of minnesota, where he came of age politically had been steeped in the legacy of fdr.

now i've become especially interested because of my service in the white house and presidential leadership and a presidential decision-making and i feel so fortunate that i came by this incident in 1939, 1940s to write about. i didn't know much about fdr really when i started this after, the i quickly came across someone who did know him very well. and that was frances perkins. frances perkins was the first woman ever to be a member of the president's cabinet. she was fdr secretary of labor and she never had beginning in 1910 when he showed up in albany as a very young and somewhat buried at legislator. here's a frances perkins had to say. franklin roosevelt was not a simple man. the man. that quality of simplicity which we delay to think marks the

great noble was not his. he was the most complicated human beings i ever nail. and out of this complicated nature they are spraying much of the drive that brought achievement. they made it possible for him to have insight and imagination into the most varied economic, geographical, social and strategic circumstances thrust upon them as the responsibilities of his time. now as kevin said in his introduction, there have been literally thousands of books for it about a dr, more than any president like abraham lincoln. so why do we need another book? is a very fair question. well, as kevin pointed out, most of those book has been written about either the new deal years which are obviously consequential, or increasingly his leadership are in world war ii. there's been also nothing written about the connective tissue between those two ethical

achievements. and i connective tissue with the election of 1940, were fdr wrestled with whether or not to challenge history, challenge precedent and run for a third term. during this period, excuse me, 1939, 1940, he tried to prepare the country for the war he knew was coming to the united states. he tried to ensure that his successor in the white house was a democrat who supported both his foreign and domestic policies and who could be elected in 1940. i try to get into his head, you have to excuse me, and a little bit of a cough. excuse me. i tried to get into his head, which was not an easy thing at any time, but it was particularly difficult at this period. he of course wrote a memoir. he didn't confide much, but he

didn't have many indian misses you will see. so it was very hard to get into his head. franklin roosevelt won a huge lan light election in 1936. he carried all but two states. it was an incredible mandate that he had. but he misread his mandate and he overextended himself beyond the mandate that he was in fact given. the experienced almost immediately through his hubris what we have come to know as the second term curse. as a matter of fact, i believe he invented the second term curse. he majorly set up a very center court packing plan to the congress that it was immediately and decisively rejected. he took his foot off the economic accelerator, cut back on federal spending. 2 million more people joined the

unemployment rolls. we had what was known as the roosevelt recession of 1937-38. in 19 dirty, the out your elections he tried to punish or purge those recalcitrant democrats would oppose parts of this new deal program. and he totally failed. so he had gone in two years from a high point of this president the in terms of public opinion to the lowest point of his presidency in 1939. the new deal had our day run its course. there was no appetite for more of it. fdr was in fact already shifting his detention and economic affairs to the foreign affairs, particularly the war breaking out in europe. he had planned to retire to hyde park after his two terms, which of course was the custom.

the constitution was then silent on whether or not a president could run for a third term. but the custom started by and then continued by thomas jefferson and others became tantamount to almost. it was such a deeply ingrained and respected practice your very few had even considered challenging it and no one had exceeded. he was going to retire because he said he was tired and he was broke and he was both. he had arty designed and was then building the first presidential library in america and hide art, new york, which has just been recently restored. i urge you to go see it. it's a fabulous, fabulous experience. he built the retreat called top cottage to hyde park, where he can get away from the visitors he knew would come in his post-presidency. inside the lucrative concept to

write regular articles, he was going to write his memoirs and harry hopkins and sam roseman, two of his top aides have come to hyde park and do all of this. so the plans were set. he was thinking about retirement and he was enjoying it. there is some third term rumbles about whether or not he really might run. but nothing to it. he didn't give it any serious attention. then as kevin also mentioned at the very beginning of the book, he was woken in the middle of the night, september 1st, 1939 number two result hitler invaded poland. hitler had arty swallow the rhineland, austria, czechoslovakia and now, this is too much even for the policies of great britain and france. both of whom declared war on

germany. so fdr's worst fears were realized. major war was on the verge of breaking out in europe and the united states was unprepared for it. even though it wasn't directly threatened at that time. but what to do under these circumstances was one of the greatest problems to face the president, i believe, since i can face the question of whether or not to risa/fort sumter. the u.s. had no military credibility and most importantly, the country was heavily isolationist. there's a lot of disillusionment about american involvement in world war i. a lot of people didn't think we belong feher and they thought that giving aid to great britain was the slippery slope to war again in europe. but roosevelt did do was find they persuade the congress to repeal the embargo, the arms embargo contained in the nature of the act, which he had earlier

signed to his regret. he immediately regretted it. so his strategy was to build a first line of defense for america through britain and france by getting them the aid that they needed. now he shaped this policy by himself. try to picture this. here we are in 2014 i believe. 1940 there is no national security council staff in the white house. there is no staff in the white house with any sensitive responsibilities. that is all out in the department. so he made these decisions. he shaped his apollo eight essentially by himself. there is no intelligence apparatus. no cia or oss. his means of getting intelligence is often not: mccarver can't is returning from

europe. what's going on over there? everything was very ad hoc and we would be very loose. during the fall of time, there is growing pressure on him to state his intentions of what he will do regarding running again in 1940. well, letters and telegrams kept coming into the white house, urging them to think about a third term. but he wouldn't address the issue. the press started calling him if things because he wouldn't address it. at the gridiron dinner, december december 1939 are meant on the street at once of these fancy hotels, the press mercifully touted a great one, will you run? and then they rolled out an eight-foot tall papier-mâché sphinx with an oversized head of fdr and the cigarette holder in the place broke out in rocket after and of course no one laughed harder than fdr. he liked it so much she bought

it and he took it to hide or where i cannot tell you it's not a storage and on display for the first time since 1939. so there are two major storylines here. war breaking out in europe and will he run. the real war breaks out in 1941 hitler invade the low countries and france, all of whom immediately fall in great britain is hanging by a thread. so he is now two away from the democratic convention opening in chicago and he has to sharpen his focus on what is going to do. this is where the decision-making process of frank delano roosevelt really get interesting. many assumed he was running. it always been his plan to run. in fact, there's one that ever enjoyed being president more than fdr.

but i've never found any evidence to support the site always thought of running. as a matter of fact on the contrary, nonetheless this debate continues, so i call a who i think is the greatest living authority and franklin roosevelt, william lichtenberg who taught at duke and i took this question to it. what do you think? studios went to run or was this something he came too late? the luxembourg caused and said the only thing we know first written about fdr is that he never lets the the voluntarily. [laughter] unarguable. and he made this decision entirely alone. fdr always needed people around him, even when the situation was tense, especially when the situation was tense. but he was a very solitary man.

there is no evidence that from the middle of 1939 at the beginning of an 39 until right before the convention that he spoke to a single individual about whether or not he should run again. nor did he ever ask anybody to do anything to further his cause. that included eleanor. it included harry hopkins and everyone on whom he was on intimate terms. he waited until the very last minute to make this decision as he did many other decisions because he thought it would alternately be informed by more information. so what did i learn about who fdr was? while ssa, he was famously social, but essentially solitary. he was raised as an only child on a remote estate in upstate new york had a few friends coming to your intimates and he developed level of self-reliant

that increased over the course of his lifetime and certainly over the course of his career. eleanor said he had no real content on. not me either. robert sherwood, the very gifted playwright, excuse me, who was recruited to the deterrent or for fdr was a very astute observer of roosevelt and he ultimately wrote the classic biography of roosevelt and hopkins, which if there is the bible and fdr literature, that it. it's a wonderful, wonderful book, enormously insightful. he got to know roosevelt very well. said franklin roosevelt has basically forced to interior. now what did he mean by that? well, he had a thickly forested interior. he didn't want anyone to penetrate back to see what was going on in died. he was probably the most

solitary president we've ever had. and very much a loner in the tents. i also learned and i am not alone in this that there is a duality to franklin roosevelt. he could be a bold, perceptive, prescient and moral statement was very principled goals for the country. no question about that. at the same time in pursuit of those goals, he could be cautious, ambitious, sometimes arrogant, manipulative and even duplicitous. this is the contradiction that is fdr. this is why frances perkins said he was such a complicated man and there's no episode in as president be for life that underscores this duality more than this does. four days before the chicago convention opened on july 11, 1940, franklin was well called

felix frankfurter down from the supreme court. they had a two-hour session in the oval study adjacent to the president, not to be confused with the oval office, which is roosevelt's favorite room. they talked about this issue for two hours. at the end of a commercial that said i want you to write me a memo immediately about what you told me on this. of course mr. president i will. i would say to request one from archibald mcleish the librarian of congress. jim billington's predecessor if you will. yes, sir, mr. president. to make a quick and keep it quiet. so he did. he returned the next day with two memos, which i believe are the best window into fda fdr's mind on this question and i think you reprinted in the

appendix. so what was going on in roosevelt's head. the question was was he justified in breaking this two-term limit by the emergency that he saw the country facing. both frankfurter and mcleish said yes, you are not only justified, but you have a duty to run. there is no one else. that is exactly what he did. he decided to run at that moment because of the war. he could not find anyone else who support his policies and you could be elected. he tried until the last moment to get cordell hall, secretary of state to run and he would not run. so he felt he had no alternatives but to run himself. assuming disguise draft wasn't kidding anybody about that. because there were plenty of

support. set the stage for a very dramatic convention. some of the scripted, some of the very unscripted. and it contained a fascinating cast of characters, not least roosevelt and again frances perkins. there was a lot of resentment at the convention because the delegates didn't go that roosevelt had intended about his intentions and then he picked henry wallace to be his vice president who was not only not amount as some thought a mistake i'm a bit down the prerogative of the convention to pick vice president. fdr set another precedent when he decided he was going to take his own vice president. so there was a revolt going on at the convention and frances perkins called the president. he listened to her. she pleaded with him to come to chicago to address it.

he said no i can't do that, frances. it will make me say things they can't say. i'm not going to do that. after a while they agreed that eleanor should come. wouldn't it be good? yes, the president was very enthusiastic and so was frances perkins. this team together to persuade eleanor to come and frances perkins at a time when women did not play a role in politics. this is a very, very significant time. she asserted and often have such respect with fdr did he listen to her. and she's a famous lane during her address to the convention, she said you can't treat this as an ordinary nomination in an ordinary time. the next president will perhaps very larger, heavier responsibility than any other man before her.

this of course is the speech that doris kearns goodwin will be here shortly, turned into a wonderful book titled no ordinary time. this is where that comes from. henry wallace is narrowly, but the revolt was off in the convention adjourned without more turmoil. another important character of this. was charles lindbergh, much admired, but also the leader of the isolationist movement. roosevelt detested them. if i die tomorrow, number one thing. charles lindbergh is a nazi. charles lindbergh was many things, that he was not a savvy. he was used on three military inspection trips to germany during the late 1830s. wendell wilkie, if there is a

secondary hero to this story, it is when the wealthy. he is now the bill remembered unfortunately because there was a very significant dates in and he was the utilities executive, but very charismatic and he came from the republican nomination and charmed the dickens out of the republican party. that there were some that didn't like him, that was entered in ,-com,-com ma they'll sell conservatives didn't care for and because he had so recently been a democrat. and this is personified at one point a chance encounter book he had with the former senator from indiana, james watson, former senate majority leader who said wendell, you are a nice fellow, but i don't much like your politics. wilkie said it's true, senator. i was a democrat till recently,

but i am now a republican. i've seen the light and a plan to win the nomination. well, wendell, back in indiana we don't let her leave the choir on the first night. [laughter] they all got over it eventually. but where wendell wilkie really distinguished themselves during the election he took a very courageous and in favor of the first east i'm trapped in american history. roosevelt did to limit their combined power think i did enact good, but where he was really shone in my view after the election he said we'll may have one president now. it's franklin roosevelt. and he has my support. and they had a famous dinner together, just the two of them the night before roosevelt was inaugurated for the third time. roosevelt sent a handwritten math edge to churchville via

wilkie who was then on his way to london. wilkie was so moved by what he saw that he came back and testified very passionately and very effectively for land lease and fdr never forgot it. he said we never could have had when you spin lambasting the united states the great arsenal of democracy during world war ii. made huge difference. and he probably wrote his chances for the 1944 nomination and not at loan because virtually every republican leader in the country urged him not to do it. winston churchill of course a very key role here. they only met once at a dinner in london in 1918 or a world war i. churchill never remember the encounter. roosevelt never forgot that churchill never remember the encounter. [laughter] that roosevelt -- churchill

escorting roosevelt area heavily during this period in order to get more arms for defense against hitler. and he especially needed destroyers, escort vessels, which the u-boats are taking it regularly. roosevelt finally found a way to get the destroyers to britain without going to congress. this is no small thing. but he had to do it in such a way that it appeared to be a trade for the use of british bases in the european and churchill was worried that roosevelt was going to portray this as the united states having got the better of the bargain while the menace to politician himself, he didn't want the interpretation to reach britain. so to work it out, roosevelt arranged a transatlantic telephone call and he got his attorney general, robert jackson, on the phone to explain

that this had to be a trader referred him. churchill said empires just don't bargain. attorney general jackson said well, republics do. roosevelt tried to smooth the waters here by saying coming as the winston, the problem is i have this attorney general and he says we have to bargain. churchill said i move. maybe i could trade these destroyers for a new attorney general. [laughter] they got it worked out. they got it worked out. in the general election can fdr basically ran his commander-in-chief against adolf hitler according to the republicans, kind of a variation of the modern rose garden strategy. he was doing expection tours, but not campaigning as the candidate. he did however during the midst of this election take two very, very courageous decisions. one was for the first peacetime

draft, the other was the destroyers deal for which he could potentially be impeached. in any case, wilkie succumbed to the eyes of the republican leadership and republican leadership been made toward the issue and he said both were roosevelt. first let us elect it, the boys will be in the transports by april. he started calling roosevelt a warmonger. the poll started closing in roosevelt was very worried, smoke them out, had to go out and campaign, discard and be a candidate. it was closed so rapidly that roosevelt thought he was going to lose. on election night on november 5th, 1940, he caused himself in the dining room at the big house where he always received the returns.

he saw something in the early returns that he didn't like. and he turned to a secret service agent, mike riley is the night, close that door. i do want to see anyone. he had never done this before any of broken out in a sweat. mike riley said you mean your family, mr. president? i said anyone in the door closed for 45 minutes. fdr was not heard from. what went on in his mind during that period is in historian school, but no one will ever know because he never wrote it and he never told anyone what was in his mind. that didn't keep me from speculating a little bit in this book, but that is the license of in historian. in any case he won the election in this election i maintain was one of the most consequential in american history. his decision to run for her term really was justified. the first consequence was to put

in place a man of proven it aaronson ability to lead this country through world war ii and we are now in evidence of how he took command of the anglo-american alliance immediately after pearl harbor and among other things, that the alliance from launching across the channel invasion of france in 1942, which would have been in an educated disaster. george marshall was the primary proponent for that. this election began the eclipse of isolationism in america. america had always an isolationist nation come of it ever since then, we've always been engaged for better or worse than often for the worse in the rest of the world. when the lease on the destroyer deal really planted the seeds for the national security state that we have become today. and it changed the way we think about the presidency. before 1940, we seldom if ever

thought, is this someone a presidential candidate who is capable of conducting foreign policy and protect the american people, which is the premier responsibility of any president. so as i said, i think 1940 was one of the most consequential elections in 1964 with lincoln ran for reelection during the civil war. altogether, it was an extraordinary example of presidential leadership. roosevelt set his sights on saving britain in giving the united states the time it needed to prepare for war, which he knew was coming. he concluded that he could only accomplish that goal if he challenged 150 years of american history and ran himself and he did. it was a messy process. it is not always pretty, but i would argue that it got the right result for the country.

we will never get fully into fdr's mind on what he was thinking during this time. this book is simply my own effort to try to penetrate the thickly forested interior by robert sherwood talked about. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you. let's take some questions. >> if i recall correctly, roosevelt ran on a plot form of not getting into war. am i correct? >> i'm sorry, is your micron? could you speak closer? >> if i understand closely, didn't roosevelt run on a platform of keeping us out on more? >> he said he had no plans to take the country into war, but he became a little bag, a little opaque as the questions came

near. it was his intention to keep the company. he always said he intended to keep the country out of the war, but he did not want to take a hard and fast pledge that he would ever get involved. so there was a lot of words nothing going on on the campaign train those last two weeks. >> i question why this wasn't a cynical decision to be elected? had he taken a position? >> there are reasons to be cynical. it is absolutely sincere. he could not get the country excited about this at this time for the whole thing would unravel. i don't think he was duplicitous about this. there's no question about that. he works politics into everything he did.

the american engagement in the worse we were prepared for. thank you. >> henry wallace always seemed like a strange choice for vice president. hurt you think of fdr thinking of nsa successor. did you study much about how we settle on wallace? >> yes. he had a field of candidates that they wanted. it is basically jimmy burns or cordell hall were henry wallace. jimmy burns was too controversial. and i wasn't going to work, although he admired her in many other ways. it would not only run for president, which really laughed roosevelts mine because he was an adamant new deal.

there is some other questions about him that later surfaced, so we will never know what kind of president he would then. yes, sir. >> circum- always seen the films in the newsreels of roosevelt and it shows he was actually quite handicapped. i was wondering do they know that their president was able to walk on the second a wheelchair? >> that's a good question. there's only four known photographs and existence of roosevelt in a wheelchair. he did not go out of its way to dramatize that obviously. when he was standing, he was always standing with the assistance of the military aid from one of his sons. so he could walk, but with assistance. usually he was in the back of a convertible waving. so people knew he suffered from

polio. but he was so a bullet into this personality that it took the focus off any disability he had. so he wasn't really being duplicitous about that because everyone knew -- a lot of people knew he had the disability, but it wasn't out there in front. thank you. they make yes, sir. >> roosevelts relationship with john garner. to what extent is he concerned garner could become his successor in the event he didn't run and what was the thinking about his successor prior to the outbreak of war in europe in 1939 by >> roosevelt and john nance garner had a good relationship in the first term. he becomes vice president because of a deal in 1832. turner brought the texas delegates in the california delegates gave roosevelt the two thirds he needed in the convention. but the second terms starting with the court packing plan and

particularly with the purge effort destroyed their relationship. garner said he was going to run regardless of what roosevelt did. he never had a serious chance of getting the nomination, nor did he believe that himself, but it was mostly spied it he was trying to make a point about no third term. he had a disastrous relationship and i don't think he ever thought garner would your should we have successor. >> you mentioned the isolationist lindbergh. there are also strong right-wing organ nations and americans at bay can you talk about their role in politics at that time click >> actually, there were nazi agents in america at that time as they were british agents at that time trying to influence u.s. policy in terms of

neutrality act in the aid to europe. there were some nazi agency drafted some language for republican members of congress amended up in the republican platform. the british were trying to do the same thing with roosevelt and the democrats. there is a lot of foreign interference you might say in a very important domestic collection. there were obviously agents abroad elsewhere as well. >> what about homegrown right-wingers? >> well, they are no doubt were soft. clearly were sown. i don't have any insight, but i'm sure they are browned. >> at the convention didn't roosevelt actually orchestrate a

didn't he want to run, but he wanted the people to ask him to run with the delegates? >> that's correct. that's why was a friendly disguise draft. what happened with the speaker of the house. the first time he mentioned franklin roosevelt's name, there was a pause in the audience and nobody quite knew what was going to happen. out of all of these megaphones all over the arena came we want roosevelt. illinois once roosevelt. new york once roosevelt. that is what happened is the mayor of chicago, ed kelly had put his sewer commissioner in the basement of the hall with the microphone and he did this.

and they say it aren't i doing well? so that's what it was. nothing impromptu about this. i don't think roosevelt was behind, but everybody knew what was going on. there was a "new york times" reporter who went down the basement to find out what was going and this became the voice from the sewers. [laughter] last question i'm told. >> the war was practically one. >> it wasn't fair that the war was won. he was in pretty good shape when he ran in 1940. he should not have run in 1944. but it was during the war and he was going to yell to. he was taking what he thought was to put the best scores

continuity. he wanted to see it through. but in fact he was in very fragile health at that time. and that was the persuading fact that determined the congress to pass the president to two terms. that is all the time we have. thank you very much. you've been a wonderful audience. thank you. thank you. [applause] ♪

>> in the book "border insecurity," sylvia longmire looks at how we protect our borders and argues the federal government needs to make order security and national priority. she tacked about what chris

blatchford, author of the black hand in immigration reporter, timothy pratt. it was held at the long museum in las vegas. this is about 90 minutes. >> it's great to have you. this is certainly to people you guys are lucky you get like 10 people. because the breath of the experience that my colleagues have done is just remarkable. between the two of them, sylvia has for this state, federal government, armed forces