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 and people like churchill and halifax and other english leaders. the english were quick to share with them the private views on the important issues of the day. it was certainly no small compliment when george v, when he said john davis was the most perfect gentleman i've ever met. not surprisingly, davis reciprocated this english view with an outstanding admiration for the people british people and the british empire and it was in this two-year period that

very much influenced his thinking in international or foreign policy views in the 1924 election and davis came back with the 19 between the election and davis retired as ambassador to england came back and i think this was a refreshing note and in those days the u.s. ambassador in england had 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 and he joined a major new york law firm and was elected president of the american car association and became j.p. morgan's lawyer and was general

council for at&t and 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 nom. >> but davis decided that he needed to stay in new york, and he turned down the opportunity to go to the court and it was from this vantage point of major new york lawyer that he was nominated as the democratic nominee in 1924. i think, to me, one of the most interesting chapters in the bock, one of my favorites is chapter on the 1924 convention in new york which i don't have time to talk much about today, but i think it's a fascinating story of the perfect antithesis to the cleveland, gop convention

and this was the longest, most heated, divisive nightmare that anybody could ever devise and it went from 103 ballots and the two major candidates, al smith and william gibbs fought back and forth endlessly to themselves, the party, the platform and everything to shreds and 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 that 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.

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 in developing the firm and it was still very much a leading new york law firm. i would plan, but i don't have time to read some of the quotes from davis and coolidge so for a conservative it's very exciting to go back and read what with both of these two men to say in the election of 1924.

it's fair to say that philosophically there were very few differences between davis and coolidge and that was one of the difficulties davis had in the campaign, and it was difficult that he was most conservative and in the far right in the far left and davis was left in the middle to distinguish himself and his statements were classic conservatism very much like coolidge and it was amazing for us to think about the time when both candidates would make statements like that and i would encourage you to look for those quotes if you read the book.

davis played a hand in democratic party politics and he was very much in writing the platform which some of you all will know was a very conservative platform and it was a platform on which fdr was leched and it called for balancing the budget and cutting government spending and davis' hand was all over it. unfortunately, i don't think fdr read it and if he did read it he certainly disregarded it very quickly and with the direction that you deal with, davis began to take a very principled stand and he wound up in 1936, breaking with the democrats, he endorsed land on and there was a front page "new york times" article that he reprinted his whole speech and it was a classic, defensive conservatism and they didn't have time to read you some of the quotes. he also was involved in forming

the liberty league which was a major counterbalance to the new deal during the 1930s and '40s and probably most importantly, he argued a lot of cases before the supreme court, many of which were successful in striking down the legislation. by the time davis ended his career in shortly before he died and he died in 1955, but i think his last case was 1954, and he'd argued 142 cases before the supreme court more than any other lawyer except daniel webster and was universally hailed as the term was lawyer's lawyer. and without question, the premiere advocate before the supreme court and won some

amazing victory, the most interesting and significant one was the steel seizure case which davis argued at age 79 before the court ruled in his favor through harry truman out of the steel mills and it's one of the most important cases in american history and davis was called on to represent the steel industry which was a compliment to every one period, but to be $79 years old and to accomplish this it was aye an accomplishment for his career. so in summary my second reason for writing the book is both were exemplary public serve aan and even if know some was a die-hard liberal he would appreciate the integrity of the

two men and if one happens to be a conservative, i think he should hold coolidge and davis as genuine heroes. 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 of looking at the 1920s and was interested in davis and coolidge as men, the point at which their two lives intersect was the election of 1924 and i thought that would be a good thing to write on and i looked around and there was nothing that i would be able to find and nothing was written on the election of 1924 and that was the reason i decided to write on it because of the two men and the policies and issues of 1924, but as i got into it, i concluded that despite the fact that historians hadn'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 conservatism came from. i think i mentioned before it was the last time that both parties nominated true conservatives that we, today, have lived through roughly 85 years of post 1924 history and from 1924 until today, the gop has been the party of the right and the democratic party has been the party of the left and it was a great quote from fdr in 1924, and i think he was governor of new york at the time. the lesson that he concluded from 1924 and that he gave to the democrats was he said never again should we -- i think he said never again should we wear the conservative.

basically, we've got to go in the other direction and that's one lesson they think the democrats have certainly learned. history would show they haven't gone back on that and the two parties 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 there was basically civil war as to who would control each of the parties. while the democrats nominated the first progressive for president and that was brian in 1898, it was the republicans who elected the first republican and that was teddy roosevelt in 1904

and it was 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 and the party that took off in a conservative direction. of course, that was not what happened. and the result after 1924 was that the republican progressives, gradually left the republican party and migrated to the democratic party and democratic conservatives gradually migrated like davis and gradually migrated to the republican party. finally, let me just leave you with a quote that's at the end of the book which will try to

give the book a little bit of relevance for today. often a national change of political course is justified because of economic emergency. the most severe emergencies of the pasts, the economic emergencies of the past century were 1920, 1982 and 1980. the policies adopted after 1920 and after 1980 were very different from the liberal policies followed after 1932, and the economic results of those policies is equally dissimilar in the years following both 1920 and 1980 and harding, coolidge and reagan sharply cut taxes and reduced federal spending while roosevelt did the opposite. in 1920s and 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 speech in support of those 1920 policies and davis' brilliantly-argued rebuttals to media liberalism were significant chapters in the history of american conservatism as america adopts policies and 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. >> i hope i haven't talked up our question time, but if we have time for a few i would be happy to stay here as long as anybody wants to stay.

you didn't mention your connection to davis and the connection. i think the audience would be interested in that. >> the way i personally got interested in davis is he was a graduate of washington, and i had a great friend who was a retired dean there who had known davis for years, and i remember his talking about it and taught a lawyer's lawyer. and i read it, and i probably would have never known who davis was and i would have never known who he was. >> the 1924 democratic

convention is fascinating. i was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the personalities involved and whether if the other two gentlemen were spent and if they'd been nominated and probably not him as well and you would be 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 conservatism because of the contentiousness and because davis was essentially a third choice. >> that was a very good question and, again, i think the story of the convention has been a book written on it called $130 or something like that, but i think it's one of the most interesting chapters in the book, but the two are fiercely contested and he was the progressives and the son-in-law of woodrow wilson

and -- it was hard for us to relate to the two big issues and the two big social issues of the country at that time were the kkk and interestingly to us, in the south at that time, the kkk had 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 many of the kkks and it was very anti-immigrant, anti-catholic so they couldn't stand smith, and the other hot-button issue was prohibition and many of the prohibitionists were also populist progressives

and of course, al smith was a classic who was a northeastern immigrant and more conservative on other issues and at the convention in new york, believe it or not, the texas delegation burned a cross out in front of madison square garden and according to him, some of the best prohibitionist supporters were drunk at the end, and there were all kinds of stories of how well -- what went on there and walter lipman wrote, 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 and the worst in political party and the worst in everything, but somehow when the party went over the edge and they nominated a great man, john

davis, and they made the comment that davis' nomination was more tribute to this personality and wasn't to your point and it wasn't that the democrats at all wanted to be as conservative as davis. they just looked over the edge and said we better get somebody who was a good candidate or who is credible or they'll go over the edge there and he was the best compromised candidate at that point. >> do you get insight to, if coolidge had run and been elected, would he have done things that might have prevented the crash in the beginning of the depression and what he would have done after that different from hoover. >> that's a fascinating question, and 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, i think the popular perception is there was harding, coolidge and hoover, and hoover's lumped in with carding and coolidge and the historical very conservative and probably caused the market crash and the -- the great recession turned into the great depression because of their policies, but the fact is that even though hoover was in the harding administration and the coolidge administration, the secretary of commerce, he 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 busy body and the joke around washington was that hoover was secretary of

commerce and under secretary of everything else. [ laughter ] and when -- when hoover was elected in 1928, and the market crash occurred, or the -- the monetary policies famously were all wrong. the fed contracted liquidity instead of expanding it, and the congress passed a huge tariff, which demolished foreign trade, but the -- 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 -- the deficit, the government deficit spending 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 at famous letter to debtland where he identified hoover as the star 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. abandoned, but -- so it's -- you know, there's no way to know fur sheer what he would have done but i think the odds are very high whoa have continued tis lower taxation, lower spending. i don't know what his -- you know, whether he could have influenced monetary policy or increased the tariff, but his spending and tax policy 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 now? i mean, right now it's supposed to be 9.6. gallup says 10.1. if you go with u6, somewhere around 17%. what is more like how they calculated? >> you know, i really don't know the answer to that. i would bet there probably were some differences but i know the stated rate was well over 20%, and 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 where spending was drastically reduced, and the -- you know,

the interesting thing was that it, it was such a short -- it was very painful and did what arguably a recession should do in the economy, but 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 text 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? you've all been very patient. thank you. next weekend on history bookshelf, francine prose talks about her book "anne frank, the book, the life, the afterlife

examined the impact anne frank's diary has had on the history and understanding of the holocaust. it was 70 years ago on july 6, 1942 that 13-year-old anne frank and her family went into hiding from the nazis in amsterdam. in 1944 they were caught and sent to concentration camps. anne frank died in a concentration camp in march of 1945 at the age of 15. history bookshelf airs three times each weekend on american history tv, including saturday at noon eastern. >> explaining the constitution and encouraging students to have an interest in america's founding can be difficult for many teachers. up next, radio talk show host diane rehm moderates a panel discussion on the issues and challenges surrounding the teaching of constitutional history. david mccullogh and david wood join the panel of other scholars at this convenient for a

day-long teach-in of america's founding at the university of oklahoma. this is just over an hour. [ applause ] >> you know, i think we should begin by thanking david lauren for this extraordinary event. [ applause ] as i understand it, he simply picks up the phone and said to david mccullogh, come out to the university of oklahoma. we need you to do this, or any of these wonderful, fine sitting here on this stage.

as david has said, our focus is teaching the u.s. constitutional history in the 21st century. i love akhil's story of having his 6-year-old learn the names of the presidents. we had our son do exactly the same thing. it's a great start. i also loved his idea of having each one of us go to wikipedia to look through the names of each of our presidents to learn one fact about each of those. i find myself thinking that we are faced with a group of constitutional scholars who

adore what they do. adore the constitution. all of its inclusions. all of everything that was left out from most of us. at least i speak for myself. growing up in high school if somebody mentioned learning about the constitution, it was a big yawn. so we are now here in the 21st century where there is a great deal of talk of exporting democracy, exporting the sense of freedom that this country has developed over these 225 years,

and yet here we are learning today from scholars. but, perhaps, not knowing very much ourselves. so i start with each of you asking you, considering the fact that you're so excited about your topic -- what has happened to the interest in learning about the constitution? where have we as adults and where have professors, where have teachers somehow fallen down on the job, and how can we in the