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cle gd rng. i ju wt to sa wctll maedurcand t tc is a ius int's brlit. wluras ts. am excite myuanju fisdeang trigy about tey roosevelt, can't early the author you, of cose, kow who he is -- >> guest: edmund morris. wonderful books. >> caller: right, of course. i kept asking him as we were watching this, was in this the book? and he said, oh, yes. and i remember him reading sections of the book to me and thought he -- teddy has adhd. if he were alive today, he would be on medicine. [laughter] >> guest: that's right, and one of our historians brings this up. you know, the first episode, as you know, blair, it's really just our table setting. it's the 19th century, we're introducing you to all three characters, eleanor and franklin in a minor way, but this is mainly the trajectory from theodore roosevelt's birth to his election as the president of

the united states. now episode two, everything gets started. you know everybody, and all this is is just an ever-tightening noose of kind of dramatic stuff each night. but it's really important to understand who this add kind of unstable little boy, at one point tonight you'll see somebody says you must remember that the president is 6, meaning 6 years old to -- [laughter] and that's the kind of wonderful energy. but you also have a cost for that as well. thank you, blair, so much. >> host: diane is in arkansas on our line for republicans. diane, good morning. >> caller: oh, good morning, everybody. >> guest: good morning. >> guest: morning. >> caller: for you to know where i'm coming from, i'll be 80 years old next month, so i can remember the roosevelt administration to a certain extent, and, of course, my folks talking about it, reading newspapers and all.

and i'm concerned about the tone of your, the narrations and all on the whole program. you had an adoring tone to you. it seems to me that you could have been a little less -- the bias in this comes out strong. and another thing, it seemed when i was watching it, it seemed that teddy roosevelt was up in montana, was it, for two or three years. and come to find out he wasn't. he wasn't this that long -- he wasn't there that long. and he came back, and he married his old girlfriend. i mean, it's just all thrown over like it's okay, it's okay. it would almost be scandalous. plus the increst, -- incest. you can say all you want to, but it's keeping the money in the roosevelt family.

>> host: well, diane. >> guest: i think, diane, you bring up some really good points. first of all, this is not hero worship. we are very, very critical of all three people. in fact, we've done more than, i think, anybody else to sort of expose flaws of each one of these characters but also acknowledge their greatness and also acknowledge the wounds. fifth cousin is pretty far away. the law permits you to not -- says that you can't marry your first cousin in most states, but it doesn't say anything about fifth cousin. and, basically, i'm the fourth cousin of abraham lincoln. so that's about as remote as you could possibly be. and i think what we do say is we're actually very, very clear that he spent a specific amount of time in the west, and we list the number of months that he did off and on, we say. and, of course, it is quite scandalous when he does go back and marry within a couple of years of the death of his wife his old sweet heart and there is -- sweetheart. and there is, of course, "the

new york times" notice which his sister so upset about that she gets them to print a retraction, even though it was true, announcing the engagement. i think if you stay with it, the tone is very critical at times and also very celeb story when it deserves this. i think you'll find this an even-handed piece. mr. ward, did you want to address -- >> guest: i thought that was an exemplary answer. >> host: thanks for getting up with us on "the washington journal." >> caller: hello. it looks to me like theodore roosevelt was hyperactive. was this due to possibly oxygen shortage due to his asthma? was there any sign of meningitis or pneumonia when he was a child? >> guest: i don't think so. i think it had to do with this -- he was many things, and one of them was a depressive. and in order to keep from the dark, the darkness from

descending on him, he was almost obsessively active. and part of the reason he got so much done was he couldn't bear not to do things. >> guest: you know, dell trues, you watched last night, so you know there's this amazing phrase that he says "black care can rarely sit behind a rider whose pace is fast enough," which is a way of saying you can outrun your demons. and i think because that branch of the family was so susceptible to things like alcoholic and mental health, mental illness that he was, in fact, as jeff suggests, a depress i, that he had these physical limitation, he had the exhortations of his father to be sane, to get going. i think this set him in motion for this sort of taut, you know, patricia o'toole was saying watch in all the photographs his fist is clenched. and that's the kind of way he went through life. i think it's really important to understand how much we are the

beneficiaries and how much we are, you know, have to be very careful and see in very, very clear eyes what the deficits are of that kind of behavior in a human being. >> host: in fact, the title -- chapter one of the book titled "get action" about teddy roosevelt from 1858-19 to 1. the finger pointing forward. >> guest: always. >> guest: always. >> guest: you just think about his life. if you hear as a child that you're not expected to live out of childhood and the story is called "get action," you can realize the kind of tension this life is under. and i think that's why he burned out so quickly. >> host: and what age was he when he died? >> guest: 60. and he looks 80. i mean, it's really stunning. and by the time he was 50 years old, he was an old, old man. and after his adventure in the amazon where the ex-president of the united states is lost, suffering from malaria and has aggravated an old leg wound, he's sitting there with a lethal

dose of morphine that he always carried with him on such trips so that he can kill himself so as not to b a burden -- to be a burden to the expedition can. you go, what? the ex-president of the united states, he's out of the office just barely four years, not quite four years, and he's there about to take a lethal dose, and then he says, well, wait a second, if i die, then my son will have to carry my body out, so maybe i'll live and, you know -- >> host: maybe be president again one day. >> guest: he's absolutely certain that all will be forgiven in 2016 or 2020 and this is, you know the eternal child and optimist. >> host: william's up next on our line for republicans. you're on with ken burns and geoffrey ward. >> caller: yeah, good morning. >> guest: good morning. >> caller: i was just wondering if there's any future plans for henry ford or the automotive business. >> guest: you know, thank you, william. i am a michigan boy, and it's

really great to hear a call in from michigan. you know, we've been talking about -- believe it or not, we're planned about ten years out, so we know what we're doing between now and the rest of this decade. we have a history of cancer coming out, a biography of jackie robinson, jeff and i are working on an 18-and-a-half hour series on the history of the vietnam war, we're doing the history of country music, a biography of ernest hemingway, but among the things we want to do is talk about american innovation and technology, and, of course, you would have to include, you know, the 19th century. and so we're thinking about it. you know, if we were given a thousand years to live, we wouldn't run out of topics in american history, but that's a very good one, thank you. >> host: take a moment to talk about the voices that bring these characters to life in the documentary. >> guest: so i've felt that that narrater, that third person narrater is often if it's all alone a kind of scold, a kind of somebody that's telling you what you should know.

and the last time i checked, that's called homework. so we like to break our films up with first person voteses that read journals and diaries and newspaper reports and military things and telegrams. we were fortunate in the roosevelts to have patricia clarkson, pamela reid, patricia is franklin's distant cousin and dear, dear friend, we have ed harris and adam arkansas kin and the latest lie wall act, we were able to get paul giamatti and a little known actor named meryl streep to do eleanor. and i really think she's going someplace. i really think -- just pay attention to that name, s f -- streep, she's fantastic. >> guest: she is. [laughter] >> host: sherman, texas, on our line for independents. good morning. >> caller: good morning, guys. >> guest: good morning. >> caller: i was wondering if in the series you guys have a

reference to the proposed takeover by industrialists who wanted general butler to lead the army of the potomac and if you could comment on this briefly. >> guest: we didn't do that because it never came to anything. it is an absolutely fascinating background story, and that's -- it would make, it would make a fascinating film. it didn't fit into this one, but thank you. >> host: do you want to talk about the highlights of it? >> guest: well, butler was a fascinating, fascinating fellow. i'm not an expert on this, on this alleged plot, and it is alleged. but butler was an absolutely fascinating character. he's a here resort of of the american occupation of haiti who turned against all of that, and he's a fascinating man and deserves a very good book and doesn't have one yet. >> host: javier's up next from bradenton, florida, on our line

for independents. good morning. >> caller: yes. i just want to say that this is what the united states, this is what we need, a person like both of them, especially theodore roosevelt from 1901 to 1905 -- i mean, 1909. because he was for the middle class, for the poor people. he was not for corporations or rich people. he was for most of the hard working people. >> guest: i think, javier, you nailed it. >> guest: you bet. >> guest: i think that's exactly the story of the roosevelts. and what's so remarkable, i think, to us is that you have all three people, all of whom are rich, all of whom are born to privilege, and yet decide that they are going to dedicate their lives to evening the playing field. to say, look, this government

doesn't work unless it works for everybody. and it just can't work for the people with money and influence. it has to work for everyone. and we have to have a viable middle class and a viable middle class means a strong economy, but it also means trying to lift those people out of poverty and into that middle class. and if you look at the whole range of the 20th century not only theodore, but particularly franklin, are able to do that. and, in essence, save the republic from itself. at really critical times x. it's not saying -- and theodore's very clear about that. he wants to enlist, as he says, rich and poor alike. so this is not class warfare. it's just saying we ought to have a level playing field. we ought to be able -- everybody should have the same opportunities to rise. and i think people -- and eleanor particularly, and let's not forget her, she's hugely influential for her idealism. she understands all the issues of poverty, of race, of

minorities, of immigration, of health, of children, of labor, all of these things. and she's able to act as a goad and a conscience to her husband. and i think one of the reasons we're dawn to this story is -- drawn to this story is when thomas jefferson articulates universal truths as he thinks, as we all think in the declaration of independence, that all men are created equal, that among these rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the work of the united states is always trying to make sure that applies to everybody. now, when jefferson wrote it, he meant only white men of property free of debt can. well, we don't mean that anymore, and one of the reasons why we don't mean that anymore is theodore, franklin and eleanor roosevelt. >> host: what was it about their upbringing that made them want to do this when so many people in their socioeconomic status may not have taken the same route? >> guest: both theodore roosevelt's father and franklin roosevelt's father really

believed that their comfort -- [laughter] demanded of them helping the less fortunate. and in their time it was a little more patronizing than it was in the time of their sons. i think their sons just, they basically saw it as their duty. public service was a serious thing for them, and theodore roosevelt was the first to say the government when it's acting correctly is us, you and me. now, that is not a popular view these days, but that is, that's the basis from which all three of them worked. >> guest: it's probably a healthy basis, too, because if you think about it -- and we like to sort of look at that dome and blame our problems or look at the white house and blame our problems, but that's us. >> guest: yep. >> guest: and if you feel an ownership stake in that, then you can understand that we're responsible, each one of us either because we voted or

because we didn't vote for whatever unhappiness you feel. but as long as you make the government other, you actually can't do anything about it, and they won't actually be yourer servants. >> host: patty's up next on our line for independents. good morning. >> caller: hi. i'd like to follow up on something mr. ward said yesterday on tv. you made a comment that if fox news was around back then, they'd be laughing at franklin for having polio. and i thought that was an awful comment, and that's why i didn't watch the documentary, because i feel it's going to be very biased. >> guest: oh, no, no, you misunderstood. >> guest: i truly, truly didn't say that, and i have to say my mother lives near you, so i'm particularly interested in hearing from you. no, no, i would never have said that. what i meant was that in roosevelt's day people did not automatically report his

handicap. there was a sort of gentleman's agreement not to do so. in today's world, tragically, i think tv crews would follow him around trying to find him looking helpless. i think that's a loathsome aspect of today's world. >> guest: and it's all of them. it's not just fox, it's msnbc, it's cnn, it's all the networks. they would be straining, it would be tmz looking for that moment when, you know, the braces were unlocked and they were going to haul him up and you see the sweat pouring down, you can see the obvious pain of it. i hope you'll return to the series, catch up with it because -- >> guest: yep. doing. >> >> guest: this is by no means biased, i promise you. >> host: nancy from ohio on our line for republicans. good morning. >> caller: good morning to you all. >> guest: good morning. >> caller: from what i have realize and heard, president

franklin roosevelt, his policies inthe ed of cutting short -- instead of cutting short the depression prolonged the depression. i don't know everything about it, and i would like for you to expand on that in regard what policies he put forth prolongs the depression. and my second thing is why did he give away a lot of territory at the end of world world war io the soviet union? thank you very much. >> guest: and these are phenomenal, phenomenal questions, and let me just try to take the first one, i'll let jeff handle the other one because these are central questions and a little bit part of the mythology and disinformation about franklin roosevelt. let's be very clear, you can argue and debate over what is the correct role of government and how much government, how little government we want to have. but it's very, very clear that without the bold and decisive

action that franklin roosevelt took in the early days of the depression, we might not have a united states of america. he was able to use the moral persuasion of his office to help people put their money back in banks and save the banking system. he explained it to the people. he instituted a number of programs that not only helped begin to pull americans out of the depression, but when he himself who, believe it or not, was a fiscal conservative attempted after his extraordinary mandate in the '36 to balance the budget and slashed the stimulus programs, the united states went back into a very serious recession. it's also true, ma'am -- and you are absolutely right -- that it really wasn't until world war ii that the engine, the arsenal of democracy was the final stimulus program that brought us out of the united, out of the depression and into the war. but it's franklin roosevelt

himself who so redesigned the american economy that by september 2nd, 1945, when the japanese were surrendering, more than 50% of all the manufacturing in the entire world took place in the united states, and it's large hi because franklin roosevelt -- largely because franklin roosevelt, having worked through the depression to lift up ordinary people turned around and made sure that the great industrialists made enormous profits. and you can say that world war ii is won on the backs of american technological expertise and productivity. >> host: mr. ward? >> guest: yeah. let me just add to that. eleanor roosevelt once said the whole point of the new deal was to save capitalism. >> guest: yes. >> guest: the charge that he somehow allowed the russians to take over eastern europe, i think, is based really on a misunderstanding. when yalta happened, which was the conference at which things were divided, the russians

already occupied most of eastern europe, and we had been fighting war for a very long time, and we were certainly not going to turn around and attack our allies. >> guest: the biggest army on earth, the russian army. >> guest: and so -- exactly. so roosevelt knew that he had, he had done, he said, the best he could, and his hope was that he could work things out after the war. and then he died. now, he may have been naive about that hope, but it was -- eastern europeans did not fall because of anything franklin roosevelt did. >> guest: no. >> host: mr. ward, you bring up eleanor roosevelt. joe asks on twitter, did eleanor enjoy being the first lady, and how was their marriage viewed by the public? >> guest: ooh, that's a big one. she enjoyed some -- when she initially got to the white house, she was not happy. she was afraid she'd be

imprisoned there and be a sort of, you know, endlessly serving teas, and she served a lot of teas over 12 years. but she soon realized that there was a power in that unofficial position that she could use, and she was a relentless advocate of important causes of all kinds from civil war -- civil rights to women's rights to economic help for the poor, refugees and so on. and she was a sort of her husband's liberal conscience and his goad sometimes. and she made of that job something altogether new and every -- just as every new president is measured against franklin roosevelt, that continues to happen -- >> guest: yep. >> guest: -- everybody's first hundred days are measured against his, every first lady finds herself confronted with the memory of mrs. roosevelt.

>> host: peter from louisiana on our line for independents. you're on with ken burns and geoffrey ward. >> caller: yes, mr. burns, can you tell me, please, how much of an influence george frederick hagel had on harvard and also on teddy roosevelt and also on fdr? >> guest: well, i'm not sure about that. i know a little bit about hagel only in that his favorite student purportedly was a man named john augustus robeling who travels to the united states and would eventually build -- design and not live to see his son complete the building of the greaters engineering feat of the 19th century, the brooklyn bridge. he's a hugely influential philosopher, and the german academic model basically took over the american academic model at the end of the 9th century -- 19th century, but i don't think you can draw really very straight lines between the philosophy of hagel and theodore

or certainly not franklin roosevelt. jeff, do you -- >> guest: no, i agree. >> host: glen oak, maryland, is next, jerry is on our line for democrats. jerry, good morning. >> caller: good morning, and thank you for taking my call. mr. burns, i've just got to thank you and give you kudos for your film. i thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed the civil war, but it -- your depiction of the dust bowl and during that time, it just knocked me to my knees because it really showed what true poverty could be again in this country. , -- and, mr. ward, i want to thank you for your books. i haven't read any of them, but now i see where the great movie-making subjects come from.

>> guest: thank you. >> guest: thank you. >> guest: thank you. you know, jerry, it's really -- we live in a media age in which we're drowning in information. we've got lots of it but very little understanding. and it's really great to have c-span, it's really great to have pbs that actually takes the time dive deep, to listen to all the voices and to represent all of those voices. and that's what we're trying to do. we sort of have superficial ideas about the dust bowl or the roosevelts. they're very, very kind of the conventional wisdom. there must have been one bad storm. you didn't know that it was manmade, that it lasted a decade, there were a hundred storms that didn't just kill crops, but your children. these are important things that we've tried to tease out in the films that we've done. and i think in the case of "the roosevelts," you know, we tend to segregate them because theodore was a progressive republican and franklin was a democrat. well, he was a progressive democrat, and there's much more than they were alike than

different. and that's why i think this intricate family drama that we told so important. it helps you understand and stitch together important parts of american history that allows you to escape the kind of conventional wisdom that i think we're all burdened with today. we think we have -- we know everything, but we actually know very, very little. we're just buried in stuff, and not all of that stuff is true. and as you can hear from the questions today, a lot of people come with certain baggage and assumptions and conspiracies and things like that, and it's our job as historians and storytellers to just tell you what we know the facts are. and we employed all sorts of people from the left, the right, the center to help us tell stuff. and most importantly, people who knew the story. and i think that we're very confident that we've told a very balanced and accurate portrait of these three comply dated people. >> host: -- complicated people. >> host: do you have a favorite? >> guest: you know, they're like your children, but we're as proud of this one as anything we've done.

it's really tough to do an intertwined narrative. a lot of reviewers have likened it to a russian novel, and that's what it is. while there are three people, and that may seem easy to do, there's lots of secondary and tertiary characters, and you also have the united states in it which is covering 100 years, 104 years. from 1858 to 1962 when eleanor died, and that's a hugely important period. we've got the greatest cataclysm in human history takes place, world war ii, you've got the greatest economic cataclysm in human history, the depression. you have world war i, and you've got the gilded age, and you've got the cold war, and you've got the roaring '20s and the age of the great trusts and monopolies. this is, you know, hold on, fasten your seat belt. this is a pretty bumpy ride. and to master that has been our great pleasure and joy over the last seven years. >> host: and yet the book and film are called "the roosevelts: an intimate history." >> guest: yes. we want to tell it from a

different point of view. i think if you understand their internal motivations, you'll understand these events in a much deeper and richer way. >> host: virginia's up next, momentumsville, alabama, on our line -- huntsville, alabama. >> caller: good morning. i'm enjoying c-span as i do every day. i'd just like to congratulate you guys. my father's name was theodore roosevelt. of course, he's passed now, and even before i started to school, he talked to me about the roosevelts, he talks to me about theodore and franklin and how progressive they were. this is the relativity i would like you to expand on if you would shed light on this. president obama is considered a progressive. he's always trying to bring the middle class up and the poor class up. why is it that during this age that they're not receiving the message that our country thrives

on the middle class people? >> guest: virginia, you're absolutely right. and i think you're beginning to see the conversation. we've been locked for several years in kind of gridlock and political partisanship, but i think you're beginning to see the language even of the very rich understanding that they've done really well, by the way, since 2009 to now. and i think they've understood that if salaries remain flat, if earning remains platte for the so-called -- flat for the so-called middle class, it's declining. and the wages are declining. and you can't have a healthy economy going forward without that. all americans, it doesn't matter whether you're democrat, independent or republican, all americans subscribe to the notion of fairness, of a level playing field. and i think you're seeing that rhetoric. and i hope that our film, you know, adds just a small voice to the notion of what's the nature of leadership and how do we get things done in a very complicated country that even back then was as partisan as we

are now, and the roosevelts, both of them, were despised by a number of people in society. and so i think they were still able to get things done. and just to go back to president obama, you know, the one thing that theodore roosevelt and franklin roosevelt couldn't get done was the affordable care act. they both wanted it, and i think if theodore were suddenly to appear in our studios this morning, he would say, what? you took a hundred years to get health care? what kind of country are you, are you out of your mind? look at all the other countries. and so i think maybe it's a big political football now, but in the scheme of the progress of the united states, you could look at the affordable care act as kind of the last act of the new deal and of theodore roosevelt's administration. >> host: leads us to peg's question from twitter for you, mr. ward. would teddy recognize the republican party today or fdr the democratic party? >> guest: wow, that's a big one. i think theodore roosevelt would be not surprised by the republican party today because

he, because he battled the very conservative views that are now prevalent really all his life. he was republican, and he was terribly popular, but he was not popular with the sort of right wing of his party, and eventually he broke with them. franklin roosevelt built a great ma a chien, democratic machine which has very largely broken up. labor is much weaker than it was before, and he had always the solid south. that's been gone for years. so they're very different. i think, i think they'd both be surprised at what's happened to their parties. >> guest: i think franklin would probably recognize the democratic party a little bit more. he'd feel more at home in sort of all its constituent parts and its diversity of minority and city and progressive and all of

that. i think theodore would also recognize it, but he'd understand the same old tension in the republican party was there. founded in 1856 with two missions in mind. one, to free the slaves and get rid of this monumental hypocrisy that had been with the united states since its founding, the toleration of slavery when all men are created equal, and they went about doing that with their second candidate, abraham lincoln. and the other was to level the playing field because they had seen the interests that had already begun to take over. there was big business and rich people who were influencing government, and they thought that the farmers and the folks at of the mountain states and independent shopkeepers. and the republican party became a place for that. the progressive wing that theodore represented saw, thought that the republican party had lost its soul a little bit by returning as the democrats were also under the sway of the so-called interests of the bosses. and both the democrats of franklin roosevelt's father and

the republicans of theodore's father and theodore himself were interested in leveling the playing field. so i think he'd go, he'd wake up and he'd say, oh, i get it. the republican party's lost its way again, he would say, and i need to bring back more of these things to help bring back the main street guy, not the wall street guy. that brings back the family farmer, not the agribusiness. that brings back, you know, the principles of the republican party as it was founded. and i think history of the republican party has been this alternating current where it has been in a progressive mode and then in a more conservative mode and a progressive mode and a more conservative mode. so i think both men would find themselves, oh, i'd get it. they'd read it in two seconds and then set about trying to make compromise and get things done. they were about rolling up their slaves, and that's why i think we admire them. we certainly don't agree with them all the time and we find great flaws, but they knew how to get things done.

>> host: the book and the documentary, "the roosevelts: an intimate history." want to thank both ken burns and geoffrey ward for joining us this morning. >> guest: thank you. >> guest: thank you very much. >> thursday booktv in prime time features "after words" interviews. at 8 p.m. dr. ben carson is interviewed by nbc news political director chuck todd. at 9 p.m. karen armstrong, author of "fields of blood," is interviewed by sally quinn of the washington post. later at 10 p.m., historian james mcpherson on his book "embattled rebel." that all begins at 8 p.m. eastern here on c-span2. >> "q&a" is ten years old, and to mark a decade of conversations, we're featuring one interview from each year of the series over the holiday season. thursday, the president and chancellor of the university of