[ applause ] >> you're watching american history tv. all weekend, every weekend on cspan 3. to join the conversation like us on facebook at cspan history. >> next on american history tv, we will hear from a panel about the personal and political consequences of his long term love affair. the affair predated the 29th president's administration. surviving love letters detailing the relationship with until very recently kept under seal. the former president's grandnephew richard harding explains why his family insisted on keeping the letter's sealed and how the family continues to deal with the fall out from the affair and the impact on hard g harding's legacy. this is about two hours. >> my name is jim hudson. i'm the chief of the library's manuscript division.

on the stage with me, we have james romanald, a distinguished trial attorney, the author of two books, one about his great grandfather who has a wonderful title and also seems to be a magician. a real magician. >> yeah. >> but he was the chairman of the democratic party during the harding era. of course one of the books that brings it here on warden harding's affair, espionage during the great war published in 2009. we also have dr. karen who's an archivist who prepared the harding papers for reader use on

july 29. cakaren has a ph.d. from brown musicology but is an excellent historian and first rate person and we have the grandnephew of president harding. he is a psychiatrist on the staff of the university of south carolina. he was the president of the american psycho analytical >> psychiatric, sorry. >> close. >> i shouldn't make that mistake since we have freud's papers. i need to apologize for that. a very brief description of the harding papers here which is probably unnecessary given the publicity they've received but there are about a thousand -- the collection not the papers.

there are approximately a thousand pages of these correspondences between warren harding and kerry phillips who was the wife of one of harding's good friends in ohio. there was a love affair between the two from 9ó1905 to 1920. the collection, however, only has letters correspondence between 1910 and 1920. most of the vast majority of the letters and all of them probably. i don't know if there are any kerry letters in there. >> there are a few. >> but the vast majority of letters are written by harding and retained by kerry fiphilip. she said she wrote him volumes of letters quoting pages for lines she once reminded me but

very few of her letters survive. the phillips material in the collection is mainly notes, drafts, memoranda. how did the library of congress get this collection? we got it in the following way. in 1963, a harding biographerr francis russell whose biography, the shadow of blooming grave is probably the most widely read. would you say, jim, or not? >> unfortunately that's true. he turned up in mare yon rion,

looking for information on harding. he was steered to a local lawyer who was the guardian of kerry phillips. in 1956 she had to be put in a nursing home. she was not a ward of the state incidentally. we've discovered that recently thanks to the papers that i will mention in a minute. but the lawyer actually at kerry's death in 1960 kept the paper correspondence he discovered. certainly unethically. was that illegally? how would you characterize that? he was the lawyer representing the estimate. i would say probably unethically not illegally but he should have told the daughter of kerry phillips that he had the papers in his basement. >> right. so in any case, russell was put in contact with the lawyer and got limited access to them. i'm summarizing a very complicated story. russell spread the word and it got into the press, they got ahold of it. in the summer of 1964, there was a front page article in the new york times about the harding

letters. harding's nephew, the father brought a lawsuitñ right away fr infringement of copyright. the papers are certainly written by kerry phillips but the copyright interests were owned by the writer warren harding. the suit went on and lasted for about seven years until 1951 when a resolution was reached. the hardings' bout the papers from phillips' heirs.< >> an ohio court had sealed the letters just after the new york times article in 1964. they sealed them on july 29, 1964. we've had them since 1972 but

there was a 50 year embargo on them. that will expire a week from today. there's more to the story. russell entered into a kind of partnership or devils barrigaint the historical society with kenneth ducket who made several microfilm copies of the letters. actually we tried to track one of them down. karen did. we -- the institution that was alleged to be holding it did not i don't think we ever knew how many. it's not clear how many copies ducket made. he made about seven or eight copies. >> it's not clear where any of them -- we know where one of them is. one of them turned up in his own personal papers which he donated to the western reserve historical society.

jim learned/x about this in 20 for04. he found this irresistible trove of letters and wrote the book that you see so often quoted in the papers. at some point, he mounted -- he think, and mounted them and some of the images on a website that he maintains. these are the images you've seen in the newspapers or on late night talk shows even. >> right. >> our own collection here -- the security of that collection has never been compromised. no one has ever seen anything accept staff members who have had a chance to perhaps look at them. i never have. just a little bit.

they are in our vault in our manuscript division which also contains security classified material. that's where we've kept them. what we're going to do is on -- a week from now, we have scanned the papers. we're going to put them up online. they are scanned at 400 dpi so they will be an obviously much better product than any kind of microfilm that's still kicking around. there are some material -- some material in there, that are not in the m microfilm. >> right. >> these will be online. as a bonus, we were fortunate enough to receive a collection, collateral collection in a way from the members of four great grandsons of kerry phillips.

it's a collectionçh of informatn about some of the litigation that went on and it's harding -- some harding letters to the philip's family to his granddaughter. ayes ay it's not air large collection but there's some very interesting things in there. that also will be put online on the 29th. so i think we're very happy to have the opportunity to do this. both of these collections. the library as you know, you may not know, we are the presidential library in the united states. these other people are just third rate. we have the major collections of george washington, thomas jefferson, james madison, andrew

jackson, abraham lincoln, theodore roosevelt and woodrow, wilson. our interest is we're not partisans. we've never tried to defend the representations of the people's papers we have. even though we don't have the major harding collection. we tried pretty hard to get it and didn't. we always want to make sure the factual information we dispense about papers are correct. so we've done some digging around about harding as well and it's -- i didn't know much about harding when this started. i was trained as a diplomatic historian and knew a lot about the 1921 washington conference, limite9ñ naval armorents in the pacific. other than that, i said harding, this guy -- i just went with the flow and thought the guy was sort of a -- a slob.

in attempting to work on this collection, we've -- it's astonishing, the amount ofpr misinformation about harding or indeed everybody even connected with him. his wife, kerry phillips, it's unbelievable. the question arises how -- what's wrong here? what's wrong with the picture. why didn't historians or somebody correct this stuff? we've been trying a little bit. we have a nice collection out in the table of some things we found from our own collections about harding so i think some of this is really important. i will let karen who found most of this stuff briefly describe it and then we'll go on.

after hearing about the custodial history of the letters, i'd like you togi contemplate the original home of the harding/phillips correspondence. hidden in a box at the back of a closet for 35 years while the recipient of those letters grew older, more isolated and increasingly impoverished. kerry phillips never sold the letters, never published a book. as far as we know, she never showed the letters to anyone. she's been accused of black mail but it's really unclear if she ever cashed in on those letters or made any black mail money. so the letters remained hidden. it's like so much about harding. so many things hidden away.

harding died unexpectedly onlyx 2 1/2 years into his presidency. his wife died only 16 months after that. they had no children. shortly after his death, the tea pot dome scandal put a cloud over the entire administration. basically there was no one to speak for harding. all of his papers will be left to the harding memorial association in ohio where they were closed. it took 40 years for the papers to open for research. his legacy was like an empty room. without the materials that historians use, the harding story was built on hearsay. this is the organizing principle of the harding display out there. there are so many persistent rumors about harding that we decided to search our collections for items that related to some of these.v the best example of an absolute fabrication is the supposedly

mysterious death of warren harding. a death rumors to have been suicide or murderous poisoning by his wife. notions of a suspicious death were cemented into the public mind by the 1930 book, the strange death of president harding created the story of florence poisoning her husband. although within a year the book was revealed to be a hoax. it is today in print. on dismay are items from the manuscript division of the boon papers. he was one of the doctors in attendance when harding died. harding for years had lived with extremely high blood pressure and hard disease. there is no doubt that he died of natural causes there's a small section in the display dedicated to the popular belief that he was a poor writer and

mangled the english language. of course one person's trash is someone e;else's treasure. harding was actually a very popular public speaker. he did not invent the word normalcy. another section deals with the rumor that harding was part african-american. the rumor behind the so called whispering campaign of 1920. harding's presidential campaign. we've included two presidential campaign posters one printed by an african-american political activist supporting harding and quoted from one of harding's speeches that favored civil rights. the other a republican party poster with a harding family free intended to silence the whisperers and demonstrate the whiteness of the harding9 line. while searching for material, it was pointed out that a strange manuscript in the walsh mcclain papers and asked me to try to figure out what it was and why was it in mcclain's papers?

>> evelyn mcclain, the woman who owned the hope diamond came from a very wealthy family and married the wealthy ned mcclain who owned the washington post. they had a large estate in friendship in upper northwest d.c. >> evelyn was at the top of the social world. i pulled out the mcclain box of one harding material and i found that strange manuscript. pages pulled from the racist 1920 book by chancellor, a professor at the college of wooster. the professor claimed that harding had blacked ancestry. the ripped out pages are heavily edited and with extra pages insert. who was editing this book? then i found a printer's plate for a clan publication in the 1922 general correspondence file. why would such things be in evelyn walsh mcclain's papers? ir contacted the archivist at te

college and she send me a sam of of the hand writing sample. the hand writing belongs to chancellor. the pieces began to fall in place and the old rumors about this book appear to be true. government confiscation of books, manuscripts in ohio, transported pack to d.c. for destruction at the mcclain estate. obviously evelyn kept some things even though there are few extent copies of this book, it #9q source forf this book, it many of the rumors about harding. also the only print force before 1964 that mentions the affair with kerry phillips. the first part of the display is devoted to kerry phillips. although many published sources claim that harding had multiple affairs, there is only one verified relationship. the 15 year relationship with kerry phillips. a lengthy and complicated affair. the items displayed are either part of a recently acquired gift

from the great grandsons of kerry phillips or documents found at the national archives. from the phillips collection we finally have good collections of kerry phillips as well as her daughter. also from that collection is a set of letters from harding to her husband william that demonstrates the cordial relationship between the hardings' and phillips' in the 1920s. the 1964 personal account written by isabelle, describes a difficult relationship with her mother and her shock upon learning in 1964 with her mother's affair with harding. just to review, kerry phillips and her daughter lived in germany from 1911 to 1914. kerry phillips held a progerman, anti-british view point in foreign affairs. she was opposed to u.s. entry i÷ world war i and stridently expressed her opinions. some of you may have already read the book, the harding affair.

we discovered that it leads together a story of romance, politics, and world war i. in the end he concluded that actual paid spy for the german government during world war i. it was this question that led jim hudson to go for sources and then ask me to visit national archives. at the national archives, they suggested the military television files. copies of some of the documents i found are on the displays also. they fill in some of the missing puzzle pieces to the story. we now know where they spent august of 1917 at the naval base. we that a mr. lancon was so offended by kerry fiphilip's progerman talk that he reported her to the justice department. for me the most astonishing documents is the 1917 ex-change between the head of military

intelligence with then senator harding. kerry phillips had reportedly called senator harding her friend. so the spot light was on harding. how well did he know these women? could he testify to their loyalty? kind of creepy. harding responded with a three page hard written letter. isabelle is golden. kerry is intelligence, proud, imprudent in the expression of her opinions. in his words, quote, the very openness of it would seem to establish its innocuous character. in other words if she were a spy why would she talk this way? even though this relationship would seem to have been a dangerous liability for a u.s. senator he never back add e from her. now it's time for me to back away. >> all right. two more important tasks before we begin a conversation.

we have a statement from the motea family. thetr donors of this excellent collection that karen and i have talked about. they would ask me to read it. then dr. richard harding will make also a presentation. here is a statement from the motae family regarding the public release of the harding/phillips collection by the library of congress. kerry fulton phillips is our direct ancestor and it is our endeavor to judge her on fact and not theory or untruth. with that we also historical scholars of this era to be cognizant of the extent of misinformation, distortion and speculation paraded as facts surrounding this woman and the subject. a prime example of this is a theory that not only kerry but

her daughter ayes isabella were involved in espionage. there is no prove of this. this was vaeinvestigated by two u.s. government agencies finding no evidence of inclusion merely two people expressing their german sentiment. other popular notion is that there are no living dissidents of kerry phillips. remember these areg"3z four gre grandsons. a further area of concern to us is the portrayal of how kerry handled these letters during her lifetime. even well after the death of president warren harding when there was no alleged pay offs being made, kerry kept her collection of letters concealed, protecting the legacy of this president. it was only after she lost control of these letters due to control of these letters due to old age that they came toa

well correspondence might have shown a certain willingness to cast him in a negative light, in fact this less than perfect woman never did intending instead to take the letters to her grave. >> perhaps this stands in testimony to her feelings for this man. while we were not acquainted with kerry in our youth we certainly knew our daughter, and can sure that she was a woman of grace and honor. isabella spent her life married to a man shae de adored and supported. she claimed of no knowledge with her mother's affair until confronted with the misappropriated letters of her mother's estate which are being discussed today. today he was a close family friend and the revolution of this adulterer affair was crushing. when this burst in the 1960s, she was ill with a rez pespirat

condition that would cut her life short. she sought to establish ownership and gain possession of her mother's documents to prevent their untimely publication so=c that the originals could be transferred to the harding's with the understanding that they would be sealed until well after the death of all involved. one might then ask what the motivation for her action was? despite quote common knowledge to the contrary, the tie between warren harding and the phillips family was strong until his death in 1923 as documented in the correspondence we offer here today. a letter alluded to by karen which says that kerry phillips, other says that kerry phillips, visits, took n r an automobile trip in 1922 and visited

harding. if the decision -- she honored his memory by working with his family on the disposition of these documents so that they might do the most good and the least harm. knowing that this body of papers would eventually be made public, isabella passed onto her heirs correspondence documents and notes related to the subject. we as a family have remained silent, upon this milestone we feel it is appropriate to share these documents passed down to us to be known as the philip/matae collection so that a more accurate hiorie historic record can be÷ achieved.

so that is the statement from the four great grandsons. now, dr. richard harding will have the podium for as long as he wishes. >> it will be 45 minutes. and then time is up. >> we can all leave after ten minut minutes? >> yeah. i'm richard harding. grandnephew of warren harding. grandson of george harding the only brother of the president who survived into adulthood. father george iii. george was in the middle of the heart of the 1964 harding affair papers controversy.

joining me today are my two brothers george and warren and other family members. we're delighted to be here. it is with some ambivalence but with a sense of history that we're present. 50 years ago, my father along with his siblings acquired with the papers, had them sealed and entrusted them to the library of congress. the current generations of hardings have honored that trust to our collectiveú1 knowledge n individual has seen or had access to the original letters accept for staff members as was mentioned earlier. i was asked to talk just of a little bit about the family background. so if you'll indulge me just for a minute. warren harding's parents were ohio frontier farmer as the

country came out of the civil war in 1865. his father's claim to fame that as a soldier for the army of the patomic he went to the white house and shook the hand of abraham lincoln. 55 years later, he would return as the father of the 29th president. he and his wife were successful farmers but they wanted more for their growing family so both, both, went to cleveland íshom e homiopathic medical school and began a career of medicine. my grandfather went to the university mish fwchigan medica school and followed in their footsteps. warren finished college, taught for a year and then got into the newspaper business. he took on the marrian star and

made a great success out of it. warren ii, ruth, charles, mary had a second relationship with him. he filled the void because of the chronic cardiac illness of my grandfather who had roamatic fever as a young person and had valve problems for those of you who remember back in these days. that was common. he taught his nephews and nieces to ride bikes, throw baseballs, and do all of the things that kids do and he was present and supportive when their father was very ill which he was frequently. now, at his death, president harding left $10,000 to each

niece and nephew. you can figure out how much that would be now but it would be quite a bit. they used that for their education not a model t ford. as was happening probably now with a lot of kids getting that money. four out of the five of those nieces and nephews graduated from medical school and the fifth from nursing school. this gift and its careful use enabled the family to continue the/%ujttájional direction for the next several generations. let me make one point clear. we are not here to deny facts. what happened between two consenting adults over 15 year period, 100 years ago, is not for our family to judge. clearly the negative ripple affects of their relationship has been keenly felt but4

processed along with the many positive attributes of our ancestors. why did my father seal the records for 50 years? well, there are times like now but sometimes i wish you would seal them for 75 years. but with only an educated guess, let me surmise that my father and his siblings did not carefully study the letters. it is likely they felt they were protecting their uncle, their beloved uncle, and the close family members who knew him. as you can remember, it had been a rough time for the last couple of decades before that, before harding as was mentioned in the presentation. it goes without saying that the harding family has always consideredvñoow the letters pri documents. with long a tradition of medical practice in public service, we firmly believe that private

matters, even for the rich and famous should remain private. however, as a person that's interested in history, i've done -- i have some understanding of the uniqueness of high level governmental leaders correspondence and its possible significance to historical scholars. especially when the correspondence includes discussions with a close confidentant of the issues of the day and the important decisions that zñresulted. in 1963, president kennedy was assassinated with the help of the brother and attorney general, the kennedy papers were collected, retained, sealed and placed in the kennedy library for a 50 year period. much of that material sealed, still. many father used this precedent in 1964 finally in 1972 was mr. hudson was saying and chose the

library of congress. he felt that this was the proper place for presidential material where it could best be housed and preserved. now, my father was a devout no nonsense person. he understood that a president's personal letters are different than those. regular citizen. he had hoped now, think of this, 1964, he had hoped that in the calm, cool, political air of 2014, that there could be a careful review of the letters by historical scholars. he, of course, in 1964 had no idea or could not even imagine that the internet was coming. he would not have believed that in 2014, any person in the world would be able to read the letters at their leisurely in

their office or at home. the family has some frustration that now most articles and inquiries so far have focused more on the titillating phrases rather than the8 meaningful historical content of these letters. so we're proudly here. the symposium will focus on a small part of harding's life. we were pleased to have some of the positive thing corrected that were brought up just a few minutes ago. the accomplishments in his life. the washingtonwa naval disarmerment conference. the fact that harding was an early leader in civil rights. that he proposed anti-lynching laws. the only president to do that for generations because it was poison for politics to get in fights in southern democrats in something like that. the fact that he was -- he

re-established the prem assy of the first amendment after the civil war where it had been trampled badly and made the hard choices that all presidents must make. we feel that instead, we're talking about often times or reading about in newspaper articles, the good man's mistakes. they seem all too common in 20th century political leaders. we as a family feel we did the right thing having fulfilled the trust set up 50 years ago. history will tell us if we were wise to do so. now, i challenge you and i see there are a number of scholars and historians in the audience, a collection of private letters from a key senator and a( futur

president to his confidentant during a critical period in american history did not come along often. it is our hope and your responsibility to not be distracted by the sexually explicit prose that fills parts of these letters but instead use all of the information in them to reassess the measure of the man. warren harding doesn't need protection. he needs honest hard working and fair historians to tell=ñuj the story as they see it. thank you. [ applause ] >> i'm going to read a -- an appraisal of president harding by his physician while he was in

the white house admiral joel boon and then we'll have the conversati conversation. boon i was man who won the medal of honor during the first world war was a marine corp physician in france and then he was the official presidential doctor so to speak for harding, cool idge, hoover and fdr. this letter was written in 1959 about harding. he says, i wonder how well or intimately you knew late president harding. he's writing a friend. i did not know him until his second year in office was some months old. from then on i had the opportunity to know him as one of his physicians. i saw himxc frequently lived in the white house for four months september to december 22 during the very serious illness of mrs. harding. accompanied the hardings to

florida, was a member of the presidential party on a transcontinental tour into alaska in the summer of 1923. was one of the physicians when president harding was desperately ill in san francisco up until the time of his death his regular fizz iings were a reserve naval medical officer and i waso6!%m career naval medical officer. no one gets to know a person as well as his or her physician does. from personal acquaintance, i observed no sorts side of president harding. i do know of a gracious, gentlemanly, courteously, kindly, conscientious,

lieutenant-governor ofxóañohio. one who loved his fellow man and not one who found any satisfaction of thinking or saying ill of him. surely a great attribute. these are but a few of his characteristics. i've never had a more cooperative, or appreciative patient in hmy long ar keer inc practicing medicine. i want to ask jim and karen -- i believe karen is the only person who has actually read every word of this document. >> no. >> he has read every word. >> i didn't have the whole collection. >> i want to ask them not about harding's political career but really what was the man's

character? what sort character was he? >> well, good afternoon everyone. this is one of the great stories of the 20th century that's now, you know, coming to light. my hope is that people will look differently atwb warren hardin. we've seen all the titillating things on the internet and john oliver reading some of these letters. quite frankly it's astonishing younger people are saying he's their hero now. you know? but these letters truly are over 20 years -- over ten years. you really do get a sense of his character. you get to know him from reading these letters. this woman to may peers to have been the love of his life. they had both good times and bad times. they fought over the first world war. that's very significant. i tell you why later. let me give you one example of

getting an idea for hiswó character. when harding was very sick in 1913, kerry phillips was in berlin. he was writing her about what was going on in his daily life. he was taking care of his wife florence, eating dinner by himself downstairs. this dog showed up in the back door who had been hit by a car twice, he said. it was partially blind. had three legs only. he took pity on this little dog and asked him in to have dinner with him. so the dog would come in and he would share some stuff with him. he eventually then after doing that for several days found out the dog showed up everyday at that time right on the spot, he said. he fed the dog and later he stopped coming and found out from a neighbor that he died.

he said it really was a pity because i really grew to like this little guy and what he was about. you compare warren harding's love for animals for caexample,e did not hunt. compare that to teddyároosevelt who liked to go to africa and slaughter everything in his path. it gives you -- these are the sorts of details that give you a feeling for the person and some idea of what their character is beyond this great love affair and beyond this fantastic event of the first world war brewing in the background. these intimate details describe him. richard, that may be something that you see as similar -- trait in your family. forth. go ahead. >> well, i would just expand on his love for his nieces and nephews that he and florence

were childless and he took them on and they're father was very ill. would go into congestive failure and nearly died multiple times. turned blue all of a sudden in those days. there was no treatment, of course. he would come one night, he stayed up all night with his younger brother who was dying. they fought. he kept saying evetime he would wake up enough to be -- to drink, he kept saying to him deac deacon, because he had nicknames for everybody, including florence. he kept saying deacon, i will keep care of the children. don't worry about the children. i will take care of them. he was that kind of a supportive person and was uncle warren to the family. i guess that's all i would have to say. >> what's your impression?

>> well thinking about it was something that comes out based on the relationship with kerry phillips and you see in the letters is loyalty. $xtreme loyalty. it really was a political danger for him to continue the relationship with her. she was pushing him away often especially after 1914. during this time period when he got this letter, you know, trying tohq ask him about the loyalty, she wasn't being very friendly to him but he continued to want the relationship. he was very loyal. i guess that's a characteristic that some people considered have caused him problems in his administration too much loyalty to some of his administration officials. so you can see how sometimes quality that's very if can trip you up if you're in a difficult job of the presidency.

>> let me read to you one passage on his brother being ill. he writes this to kerry phillips. this is in january of 1917 just before the war breaks out, he says you must not wear yourself out. you must save your nerves so must i. brothers illness was due to his overwork and weakened resittence. he had a desperately narrow escape. he is better and i am so relieved. it has taken a load off of hmy mind. i knew his merits. he must live for them. of course i would have been a real brother as best i could but i could not take his place. oh, it is so good that he is getting better. i could go it and would little matter. so you really get into this deep love that he had for his family that comes out in these letters too. >> i've of course read jim's book and i'd like to ask about the character question.

did harding he was from a very religious family3r wasn't he? his sister was a missionary. >> right. >> burma. the family was rather devout. i didn't detect much kind of moral -- him being bothered personally by the morality of some of these actions. how would you assess -- not to assess his soul but is there any kind of -- it seemed like there were no kind of dark nights of the soul or hand ringing or how did i do that? is that present at all? what's your take on that. >> you know it's interesting it is. the families can speak to that but his mother became a 7th day adventist when two of her children died suddenly. she became very religious this

is one of the reasons these people are in medicine. so they have a real strain of aventism in their family that comes from the mother. warren, however, was old enough that he had really been raised a baptist and really didn't himself become an adventist. everyone else in the family did. one of his sisters went to berma was a medical missionary. very interesting. what's interesting is when he gets to the war and you read these letters around the decision to go to war or not. he is under enormous strain." his lover does not want to go to war. he knows if he votes for war, ohio is filled with german-americans who have

republicans and could be political suicide. he decides to do so anyway. he also at one point talks about how he silently goes over to pray before the senate is opened. they always have the chaplain of the senate come out and pray. he during that time went over to try to get guidance and that he did pray. he did notpm wear religion on h sleeve but he clearly felt it very tedeeply. >> you don't detect any sense of guilt in these letters. >> oh, there's a sense of guilt. >> well disguised. >> he was good friends. this is one of the odd things of this. this is a very complex story. jim phillips was a good friend of his. he did have pangs of guilt. he wrote about it. jim at some point i'm convinced found out about it and they remained friends in an odd way but it's one of those stories that you know you really look at these people and you see both of the marriages seem to have had their difficulties.

harding's difficulty was that his wife florence was so sick that he writes they were intimate. clearly ker yry is a sexual outlet. that's fine. people should look at thannhim real human being. i said before if our ancestors did not have sex youal fant as none of us would be here today. to me that's great. richard, you should tell this story. he just felt4o patrick pkennedy after all of this came out. what did he say to you, richard? >> well -- >> by the way, kennedy and harding are the two senators to go straight from the senate to the presidency. the latest being barack obama but it was an unusual thing so -- >> well, it's a public statement that -- in so many words we were having dinner in a group setting for a meeting that we were at and i just leaned over to him and said patrick we have a lot

in common. he said why is that? >> he looked at me and said, warren harding? >> i said yeah. >> he said he's my hero. >> i looked atjeááz like okay i he pulling my leg or is he, you know -- >> no, he's my hero. he has passion. he said most people don't have passion. he said that's so important so me. so he was bringing that up as being better than the passionless that he was comparing people to. >> there's a letter in this collection dated 1916 written by a lawyer. it appears both couples went to this lawyer to talk about the situation. you can read it and draw your own conclusions. i write about it in the book. i do think that two couples did confront this situation. he was too far long in politics along at that point to get

divorced. i don't think he wanted to get divorced at that point but it was a truly complex and very nuanced relationship. >> as a matter of passion, though, that was one of the -- in a way charged some of his critics political critics made wasn't it that he seemed not to have any great vision or any great cause. >> right. i was just asked about that this morning on abc. i did a program with jonathan carl. he said almost that exact same thing. >> i didn't see it by the way. >> yeah. the fact is he had his own opinions about what we should be doing. let me tell you one thing that he thought about as we went to war, think about what happened during the first world war. it was very different than the second word war. everybody had blood on their hands. the british, jagermans, french,

russians. everyone had share of fault. we were staying neutral. wilson at the last minute tries to get a piece. it doesn't work.g unrestricted submarine warfare starts up so we're being drawn into this war. but harding -- so wilson decides and he doesn't decide this until the this is a war about democracy. we're going to make the war safe for demdemocracy. we're going to tell the germans to get rid of their kaiser. >> he said that when he asked to go to war after the czar had dropped out and

hitl hitler. in russia it gives rise to e lennon. one harding gets up and says i am voting for war. it is only to protect us. it is not for us to tell another sovereign people what form of government sthe shouthey should. teddy roosevelt was with him on this. we should not force democracy on the world especially place that's are not ready for that. now does that sound like something that's a modern theme? here is my point. we get so lost in the myths of warren harding and enjoy it but we lose this essential message that he gave us 100 years ago that we see being played out in iraq today in the tragedy there. the real issue is do we have the right to force other people to become a democracy? he said no. that's not our business. we should defend ourselves vigorous

vigorously. america first. we should be an example to the world. but we should not go in and that played out in germany, in russia, it played out in vietnam. it played out in iraq. we're having a similar problem in afghanistan. this is a big theme that came out of these letters and is something for people to really focus on. it's extremely relevant today. >> you take the position that had it not been for kerry phillips that harding might have been elected president in 1916 and we would not have had any skrafextravaganza[ of wilsonia idealism. >> my family was on the democratic side. my great grandfather helped woodroe wilson and fdr become president. the more i studied him, the more i saw that as i got into the this and i had all of the myths of harding in my head when i started looking at this that had harding become president in

1916, and he had a good chance to do so, the world would have been very different, i think. it's always dank trous gerous tt ifs. the fact is he would have gone in and won -- had he tried, won the nomination instead of charles evans hues who was a very lackluster candidate. brilliant man. supreme court justice, governor of new york, later secretary of state. but not a very good campaigner. still woodroe wilson almost did not beat him. one of the big differences was ohio. ohio went for wilson by 90,000 votes. that was 24 electoral votes at that time. it would have been a landslide the other way for harding had he won easily just as did he in 1920 when he beat jamest kox, a newspaper man running for kox

communication today running in 1920. i think had harding been president in 1916 that you would have had a different question about whether we got involved in the war and if so, what the versailles peace treaty would have looked like and what peace negotiated among different nations would have looked like. so it's a good what if question. i do think kerry -- >> do you think kerry hadpz something to do with his -- his decision not to run. >> yes. he wrote that -- i think she threatened him at that point. she wanted him out of public life. she threatened him and he writes that went over to baltimore and made the thing that made it impossible for him going after what she called his mad pursuit of honors. so i think she definitely threatened him if you do this, you know, i don't know. perhaps she would disclose the letters. but he definitely backed away from that. he was thought of as a real potential candidate because ohio had had president after

president since after the civil war. we had eight of them almost in a row all republicans so he was definitely a presidential tim per at that point. of course four years later won by a landslide. i think world changed -- the world changed because of this relationship. it was a world changing relationship. >> the relationship between harding and phillips. >> exactly. >> that's a rather striking point. >> well, it's in the letters. the thing that you fall find when you will being look at the is they are difficult to read and you'll have a hard time b e dating them. he writes easter, what easter. march twelfth, which march twelfth. it took me five years to date these things to be able to write the book. it makes a big difference what years. takes a lot of qwju)ip r(t&háhp% you have parallel correspondences that he's involved in that helped me do it. i think i got all of the dates

right and almost dated everything. it's an incredibly trove for american history for people to be looking at and studying. >> let's talk a little bit about flor eence harding. one reviewer of a book i recently read called(pañ her on the most vilified first ladies in american history.