>> coming up later this a look at the impact of populism and identity politics with authors and political scholars. live coverage from the heritage foundation starts at 5:00 p.m. eastern and on the eve of mississippi's runoff election, president trump will hold a rally in biloxi. that is life beginning at 9:00 p.m. eastern -- live beginning at 9 p.m. eastern. when the new congress starts in january there will be more than 100 new members. the democrats will control the

house. the republicans the senate. to congress, new leaders. watch the process unfold on c-span. ted widmerk on q&a, discusses his biography of martin van buren. host: ted widmer, who was martin van buren? mr. widmer: good question. a lot of people probably need to ask that question. he was the eighth president of the united states. he is often forgotten. his presidency was only four years long. there were larger personalities before and after.

but i argue that he was a pretty important guy. if his presidency was not a big success and it wasn't, still he reshaped the political landscape around him. he led an interesting life. host: why did you begin in sorrento, italy? mr. widmer: that is where he went to write his autobiography. and presidents did not generally do that then. but now it is almost required by law. that you write a long set of memoirs. he was really the first one to do that. he went to a foreign country. italy. to gather his thoughts about his very long career in office at many levels. he never actually finished the autobiography. he wrote a lot but he did not wrap it up.

it did not come out until 1919. a time at which almost everyone had forgotten who he was. i thought that was interesting. he went to a foreign country to remember all that happened to him. host: what years was he president? >> 1837 to 1831. host: what impact did it have on him if any that his father was a tavern owner? mr. widmer: i think a lot. in later american history it became very desirable to have a difficult upbringing. it proves that you overcame obstacles. you had strong character. most of our early presidents were pretty comfortably raised in wealthy circumstances. he really was not. he grew up in a crowded tavern in upstate new york. tenderhook, new york. in columbia county.

they weren't just lower middle class. they were ethnically different from earlier american presidents. he was a dutch-american. he spoke dutch before he spoke english. and for all of these reasons i found him a very interesting, new character in our political story. host: how long did he live in tenderhook? mr. widmer: he lived there his entire childhood. he went away to some little schools but he did not go to college. he began practicing law in nearby towns. he lived briefly in hudson, new york. as he rose in stature and became a more successful lawyer at the very early age he ran for local office. he began to spend significant time in albany. then he followed all the steps

of a young ambitious person. he went to new york. and ultimately to washington where he was secretary of state, vice president, and finally president. host: where did he meet his wife? mr. widmer: in his hometown. in kinderhook. she was his second cousin. which was tradition in the van buren family to find someone who was close to you and make that person your spouse. she died. so he was a widower. which was another way he was different from his predecessors. host: how young was he when they got married? mr. widmer: i would say about 25. host: what was the relationship between his boys and him for the rest of his life? mr. widmer: very close.

they were all very close. his oldest son, abraham, was married to a woman named anjelica, who became the acting first lady during his presidency. there was a feeling of young people and conviviality during his presidency that also was interesting. he is not that young but he has these strapping young sons around. one of them, john van buren, was a political talent in his own way in the 1840's. later in martin van buren's career, he gets pulled toward anti-slavery. that is a crucial point in all of his career. this unbelievably sensitive topic. where do you stand on slavery?

and the 20 different pressure points inside of that topic. he was always trying to manage the division between north and south. for most of his career he did it pretty well. but his career began to fall apart as the compromises fell apart. his son, john, was an ardent anti-slavery politician and pulled his father with him. i found that quite moving. host: describe him. what did he look like? how big was he? mr. widmer: he was not a tall man. he was 5'6". most of the early presidents were quite tall. washington struck his peers as a giant. jefferson is tall, john adamas is short. madison was short. monroe was tall. martin van buren was 5'6". he was a little roly poly also, and he was balding. i don't know if it was

compensation or not, but he had a couple of enormous sideburns. they were not yet called sideburns. they were named after a civil war general. general ambrose burnside, governor of my home state, rhode island. with aa cherubic face lot of facial hair going on. a kind of plump body. he did not fit the conventional idea of what a president looks like. host: you said he was quite a dresser? mr. widmer: he was a very sharp dresser. that story, like so many in my research, seemed telling. as a young man, he grew up pretty impoverished in the household of his father, the tavern keeper. but he was able to apprentice to a wealthier lawyer in his hometown.

after his first day of work, the lawyer reprimanded him for not looking quite as good as he should. the next day, martin van buren showed up impeccably dressed, wearing the same outfit the lawyer had been wearing the day before. for the rest of his career, he kept a very careful eye on his appearance. the reason it is telling and somewhat moving is he was trying to keep up with people who had more advantages than he did. it was later used against him to withering effect during his presidency when he was becoming unpopular for a few different reasons. there was a tough economy. the panic of 1837 hits almost immediately after he becomes president.

and this growing sectional divide over slavery that nobody can control. and his fastidious appearance began to strike his enemies as a vulnerability. there was an incredibly harsh speech on the floor of congress in 1840 denouncing martin van buren for his fastidious appearance. he had just asked for an appropriation from congress to do some landscaping of the white house grounds. which, you know, it needed it. but he had asked for fancy flowers to be planted and undulating little hills for the flowers to be planted on. and a congressman from pennsylvania just took him to town. reading features of the bill and comparing the fancy new names for flowers with the fancy way that martin van buren looked. in a time of depression it was a

pretty effective political attack. host: what was his personality like? mr. widmer: very relaxed, very easy-going. he always struck people as unruffled, even in hard political conversations he would keep his temper. andrew jackson, who was his mentor. jackson was famous for flying off the handle all the time. van buren smoothed the edges of andrew jackson. he had good relationships on the hill, around washington.

a word often linked to him was imperturbable. he seems like he could not be riled up. at the time of a growing debate over slavery, that was an accomplishment in itself. host: how was he elected to the senate from new york? mr. widmer: he was a very interesting political tactician. he always was interested in extending the suffrage. suffrage was not nearly as widespread in our earliest history as we might think. we often want to go back to the times of the founding fathers to improve our democracy, but in fact a lot of people could not vote in those early decades because they did not own enough land or they did not have enough wealth. van buren was always open to more suffrage. there were interesting questions about race connected to this. he wanted almost any white male to be able to vote no matter how much money he had. that was somewhat radical for the time. most of those people then voted for him. those were his people throughout his career.

the lower middle class. they were always behind him. especially in the north. interestingly, he accepted blacks voting but he attached a property requirement to it. which made it very difficult for most african-american voters to be eligible. but still in theory they could vote. according to the rules he was introducing. which was not possible in the south. he was in some ways and advocates for racial progress. host: you say in his maiden speech in the senate he almost had a nervous breakdown? mr. widmer: he did. for all his preparation and nice appearance, he was never comfortable as an orator.

even despite the successes. when he had to stand in congress and make his first speech, he fell apart. he came back soon and often and made plenty of speeches that were perfectly fine. his inaugural address as president was fine. not many people would remember his speeches for especially vivid turns of phrase. his writing could be ok at times. his correspondence could be direct. he had a sharp eye for politics. he could describe things quickly and memorably. host: who was john calhoun and what was his relationship with martin van buren? mr. widmer: calhoun is a very important senator. one of the most important senators in our history. from south carolina. he was an early nationalist. that is not always remembered. but in the time of the war of 1812, he was ardently for the

defense of the united states against england. for war measures that strengthen the national government. he was for a unified approach. north, south, and west all fighting together against this common enemy. but beginning in the early 1830's he changes a lot and becomes the most prominent defender of states rights. he is the beginning of a model that we see throughout history of very strong southern senators with a lot of seniority who do not like the federal government telling them what to do. as is so often the case in our history, race was connected to a lot of his feelings. he was an extremely strong defender of slavery. more and more over the course of his life.

and he wanted to be president. a lot of people thought he would be. he was a formidable intellect. he had gone to yale law school. he had gone to a northern school even though he was a southerner. he could debate well with anyone. he could write well and speak well. but he was increasingly being pulled by his own demons and by the demons of the south toward an extremely rigid proslavery stance. as he was finding himself near the top of our political system in the late 1820's, he found martin van buren blocking his way. their rivalry holds and it a lot of the seeds of the civil war coming. it is still a long ways away but van buren is a northerner and

calhoun is a southerner and they just irritate each other. host: where they in the same party? mr. widmer: they help to form the democratic party in the middle of the 1820's. historians sometimes give jefferson the credit for founding the democratic party. but what jefferson had founded had turned into kind of a nonparty in the 1820's. there was a series of virginian presidents and the old federalist party had mostly disappeared. there really was not a two-party system anymore. after the controversial election of 1824, it leads to congress anointing john quincy adams as president. some new people get together to start a new party. van buren is really the leader of that. so i call him the inventor of the modern democratic party. he and calhoun are allies at that point.

they both decide together that andrew jackson, who won the popular vote in 1824 but did not get the presidency, that he is the perfect horse for them to bet on for the next campaign. so they pool their resources and form the modern democratic party around jackson. calhoun becomes the first vice president for jackson. but they get in all kinds of arguments including an early version of a sex scandal in washington. van buren ends up largely winning those arguments. andrew jackson, who grew up in tough circumstances of his own, sees in van buren a kind of kindred spirit and begins to direct his attention toward van buren. selects him to be his second vice president and ultimately his successor. so calhoun loses all of those

early struggles and is furious at van buren for a long time. host: what is the story of calhoun depriving van buren of being minister to england? mr. widmer: after they got into all these arguments, including a really bitter one over a woman in washington named peggy eaton, who has led a kind of life of promiscuity. at a time of growing social punctiliousness, a lot of the wives of the cabinet members, really started to look down their noses at this woman. and banish her from their social events. van buren, who was a widower and who grew up in a tavern, sought

saw no reason to disapprove of her. he invited her to socialize with him. which she did. and this kind of social rupture happened in washington. jackson's cabinet was divided into the people who would talk to this woman and the people who would not. jackson's wife had just died before he became president. some felt that one of the reasons she died is that she was really happy with press accounts of their possibly adulterous marriage. they might've gotten married before she was legally free to get married. so jackson was in no mood to tolerate a lot of social disapproval. especially of a woman. so he sided with van buren. van buren resigned as secretary of state. then he was nominated to be minister to england. "minister" was the word we use back then instead of ambassador.

his appointment got tied up in the senate, as calhoun knew that it would. he cast the deciding vote against his former friend and famously said, it will kill him, sir. it will kill him. he will never kick. that was supposed to be the end of van buren's career. but the opposite happened. he came back stronger than ever. as vice president. calhoun was really angry for a long time. a lot of the growing debate around slavery was tied up in these personal aspirations. they both wanted to be president. host: you say in the book that there were 17 million people in the united states. there were 13 slave states and 13 free states?

mr. widmer: right. it was balanced for a long time. that is why expansion into the west was so crucial. it really was the undoing of the union. the inability of north and south to agree over how slavery would expand west. even before kansas and nebraska in the 1850's, there is an intense anxiety over texas. which becomes an independent republic just before van buren becomes president. a lot of southerners, including calhoun, want texas to come in as a slave state. texas is so big it could in theory be five slave states. there was a feeling that they might inundate the senate. five states, 10 votes. there are already lots of

protections for the southern way of life built into the constitution. the 3/5ths clause. this was gamesmanship by calhoun. smart southern senators who were trying to game the system. they already had most of the supreme court justices. a lot of the officers who worked in the senate and house were southerners. the north was beginning to feel some resentment. the north is gaining every 10 years. the census is counting how many people live in the north. so the number of free and slave states might stay the same but the population is growing very rapidly in the north. so van buren is aware of that. calhoun is aware of that. they are all trying to figure out how to translate this into political power. and van buren has some good moments when he figures it out better than calhoun. that's how he becomes president, but calhoun doesn't give up

easily. he tried to bring texas in to make van buren look ineffectual. which he did as president. the rivalry between these two very intelligent man is a fascinating feature of american life for a good 20-30 years. host: where did you grow up? mr. widmer: providence, rhode island. host: what were your parents doing? mr. widmer: they were both academics. they taught chinese and russian history. they worked at universities in new england. i grew up surrounded by books, but they were mostly in languages i could not read. when i was eight years old i came on a train with my dad to washington. it was a sleeper car. you cannot do that anymore from providence.

but i got on in the evening and woke up right across the street from union station. i walked into statuary hall. which you could do back then with no the security guards. it was an immersion into american history. host: how did you pursue being a historian? mr. widmer: it's kind of a boring answer, but i always had access to good libraries. there were good city and town libraries and the communities i lived in. we spent a summer in middlebury, vermont. which has a good language institute. i got my first public library card there. i am a big fan of public libraries. the andrew carnegie vision. then i went to elementary schools and high schools and universities with great libraries. providence has a small,

independent library. anyone can join it. it's got a lot of 19th-century books in it. i am also a fan of stack access. if you can walk into stacks and touch a book from 1850, that is exciting. it's a hands-on feeling. i always wanted to do a book on lincoln. this was kind of a preparatory one. i talk about lincoln a couple of times in this book. but now i am working on a book about lincoln and his two week train trip to come to washington as president. host: how many years did you spend at harvard and how many different degrees did you get

there? and how did you get in? mr. widmer: i'm not sure how i got in. i'm not sure i would get in now. back then it all seemed easier. both of my parents had graduate degrees from harvard. i was a very hard-working student in high school. so i think all of that helped. i went there for four years of undergrad and eight years of grad school. i got a ba and masters and phd. then i stayed for a while after and taught. it is the kind of place you can get comfortable, maybe even too comfortable. in the summer of 1997, i had an extraordinary opportunity to work for the government. i had been studying political history for a while.

i never quite saw myself working in politics. i had volunteered as a young person. i had voted for both republicans and democrats earlier in my life. but in 1997, the clinton white house offered me a job as a speechwriter. so i left harvard. and i left the academy, or so i thought, and became a speechwriter for almost four years. it was thrilling to be in washington and see politics in all of its messy glory. and i think it helped my history writing, too. it gave me sympathy for people like van buren, who made mistakes to be sure, but was always in the arena fighting hard for what he believed in. he moved the ball forward for what democracy is. the small d as well as the big d. the party but also the idea of representational government. host: how often did you advise

bill clinton on what to read? mr. widmer: he did not need any advice. he was and is a voracious reader. we would prepare speeches for him but then no one would know what he would actually say. some of the best parts were when he would speak off-the-cuff. he would mention recent books he had been reading. classics of mid-20th-century history. one reason i was able to write a book on martin van buren was that arthur m. schlesinger, jr. was around the clinton white house. he received an award one night, he occasionally came around, he contributed to speeches. i met him and he was a hero of mine. he was a jacksonian historian as well as a historian of 20th-century politics. there were always all kinds of

writers. clinton was famously friends with gabriel garcia marquez and toni morrison. who called him our first black president. there were a lot of novelists and historians and filmmakers floating around the clinton white house. for someone who had been immersed in books as a grad student, it was really exciting to see these living libraries walking by. host: after you did speechwriting for bill clinton, what have you done in the last 18-19 years? mr. widmer: a lot of different things. but always close to colleges and libraries and politics. i worked for a number of years at washington college in maryland. a very old college. founded in 1782. i helped to start a new center for american history and

politics. and a kind of experiential approach to studying history. to getting out of the classroom and meeting practitioners, people leading interesting lives. we had some really exciting programs bringing in foreign students to learn about our history. and also we really worked hard to study african american history as well as the kind of more familiar history of the small maryland town. which was the history of the political winners, the white family. host: you created a george washington prize in 2005. you gave it to ron chernow. mr. widmer: i am glad you mentioned that. because washington college was very proud of its association with george washington.

he gave the original financial gift to create a college in maryland. so starting that prize was really fun. it was given at mount vernon. said.ernow won, as you that was an exciting time because hamilton was so obviously a breakthrough book. it was a thrilling breakthrough book well before it became what we all know now, a thrilling broadway musical. i loved the feeling that a founding father can rise a lot in currency. our past isn't set in stone. they rise up and down in reputation. as you know, because you are so generous to us who write

political biographies because you bring us on your show. hamilton was somewhat forgotten. wasn't the $10 bill, he a president. he died young. but he roared back to life. thanks to a single book. that night was wonderful. i talked a lot with ron about why he wrote that book. i still cannot get tickets to the show, if he is watching right now. but i feel like in a small way we helped that book to achieve the very high level of recognition it has. host: how did martin van buren gets chosen to be vice president and how did he get elected president? who did he run against? mr. widmer: he was in politics young enough that he saw hamilton in action. he was a teenager basically, but he was smart and ambitious. he was drifting down the hudson

river to new york city to see if he could find a future career there. he saw hamilton speak a number of times. he became friends with one of hamilton's sons. and told him about impressive his father was. he spent a lot of time with aaron burr. hamilton's murderer. there were even rumors persistent throughout the life of martin van buren that may have been the illegitimate son of aaron burr. no one will ever know. but john quincy adams once wrote in his martin van buren diary looks a lot like burr. and acts a lot like him. he is always trying to organize factions and get southerners and northerners in political alliances. that is how you build a political party. you can call it sneaky or party building.

van buren also met jefferson in the 1820's when he was beginning to think of a great national party. he went to monticello and strategized with his hero over a couple of days. he loved visiting jefferson. so he used his time in the senate to meet a lot of people from different regions. and he met virginians especially. and that was where the idea of the modern democratic party began. it's a new york-virginia alliance. van buren pulls in new york, which has a ton of electoral votes. if you want to run for president, you really need new york. thomas richie who was running richmond, you see the blueprint

in their letters to each other, this is how the new party is going to work. they pick andrew jackson as their candidate. jackson wins. he is grateful to van buren. and after all of the social turmoil over who can talk to whom in the first jackson administration, jackson orchestrates the nomination of van buren as his vice president. so at that point, calhoun is out. van buren is in. and van buren is very useful to jackson. they are a real alliance. they see eye-to-eye. they produce a winning campaign in 1820. they form a philosophy of government. the democratic approach to government. which is about opening up the electorate. letting the poorer people vote. distributing benefits to them. smashing special privilege where

they can find it, like the bank of the united states. jackson decides that he does not like it and refuses to renew its charter. which is a pretty big deal. van buren supports that. there is an important veto that strikes down a road building infrastructure project in kentucky. van buren is all over the policy andackson's presidency the two of them are really integral to each other's success. but when he is on his own, it is harder for van buren. he needs jackson too. host: how significant was the panic of 1837? mr. widmer: huge. it wiped out all the good feeling of his early weeks as president.

almost from the day he became president, there are tremors in the air and in the entire commercial system. basically collapsed in a way we had not seen to that extent. there had been tremors earlier. there's a panic of 1819. but this was the worst one. it really shook cities, especially. a lot of banks had been started. under jackson there's a loosening of financial regulation. there was not tremendous oversight of them. their savings all just flew out the door. their investors lost all their money. a lot of american confidence flew out the window. a lot of people were investing in western lands without necessarily going there. there was rampant real estate speculation. when the panic hit, everybody

lost their shirt. it took a long time to get the economy going. a lot of unemployment. a lot of real financial misery in new york city. the beginnings of what we will see in the great depression. food lines and people starving on the streets. it was really a very hard time. host: how long did the panic last? mr. widmer: basically the entire four years of his presidency. he tried to get through some financial relief. he called special sessions of congress. he proposed some pretty radical financial reform, including the independent treasury, which is a kind of early version of the federal reserve system of pulling federal money out of local banks and creating federal holding areas. but it was slow in coming. and clunky. it did not have an immediate impact.

so he was very weak politically. he had not won by that much. he was not as charismatic as andrew jackson. when the panic hit, he lost support in the north and south. at the same time, the argue over slavery is getting much more bitter. there had been consensus to not let it out of hand. and when financial misery set in, it also opened up the floodgates for a new sort of anger in the slavery debate. that weakened his presidency. it was coming from all sides. host: what specifically happened with the slavery issue? 1837 to 1841? mr. widmer: as i found in this book, a lot. there was always a southern distrust of van buren.

basically the south felt that they owned the presidency. it mostly had, for the most 50 years of american history. mostly tall, handsome, virginian slave owners who won the south pretty easily and formed friendships with strategic northerners. and that system prevailed for a long time. van buren is obviously not that kind of person. he does not look like them. he has the strange foreign thing in his background. he is dutch speaking. he is kind of lower-class. that is why the south does not entirely trust him. he didn't win that impressively when he won. he had tried to assure the south that he was solid on slavery. so in certain ways, he was opposed to letting the u.s. mail distribute anti-slavery mailings. that was a hot button issue of the mid-1830's.

can a northern abolitionist organization print an anti-slavery pamphlet, send it to the south? nowadays we would say anything to go in the mail. but back then it was important that the south say no. van buren agreed with that. he called it the gag rule. in other ways, van buren went along with the southern way of doing politics on the hill. he promised in his inaugural address he would never touch the existence of slavery here in the district of columbia which was becoming an embarrassment. the united states was proud of its role as a role model for democracy around the world.

a lot of english travelers were coming to washington and observing with horror the existence of slavery. slave auctions right next to this citadel of free self government. northerners thought more and more that we have to take some steps to get rid of this. van buren promised the south he would not allow any steps. he promised that in his inaugural address, which was the first time the word slavery is used in an inaugural address. but in another way, he worked with northerners to show that he heard what they were thinking. he was not entirely with the south. when texas becomes independent from mexico, it wants to come into the u.s. the south wants it to come into the u.s. they want those extra senators. he says no. it is too controversial. we do not want texas in the

united states. he kept it out during his presidency. which took some courage. after he loses reelection in 1840, he tries very hard to come back in 1844. his principled stance on texas had cost him his renomination. host: when you go back to that era and you talk about slavery and you talk about blacks could not vote, women could not vote, even all white men could not vote, equate that with what was in the constitution about equality and freedom. it appears that very few people had that. mr. widmer: the constitution is written by mostly wealthy white landowners. host: but the language is all right but they did not apply it to people back then. what was the attitude of everybody who was not a white male?

mr. widmer: well, the attitude was generally one of acceptance based on a long history of going along with that philosophy. there were not too many places on earth where people of different races could vote. there basically were not any. that was largely true for women as well. van buren was ok with black people voting if they owned enough land to meet a requirement. most could not. but in theory he was ok wihth that. i begin by saying the declaration is more hopeful than the constitution. we do not just have one founding document, we have several. we have a declaration of independence that says in no uncertain terms that all men are created equal. that language implies that all people are created equal.

and there was a lot of enlightenment thinking that went into that thought and followed it that suggested the u.s. was trying very hard to begin a new experiment in enlightened self-government. in which all people had a stake in their political government. and the constitution is a little more rigid. but it has hopeful moments, including the bill of rights. and the first amendment especially, which strongly imply that all people have a say, maybe not a vote, but a say in these topics. throughout our history, we have had the implied power that if we work hard enough to improve our system, political power will eventually flow to all of us. and i think van buren was a visionary of sorts. he is not perfect. and his flaws are as interesting as his virtues. but he opened up suffrage to a

lot of people. in his home state, huge numbers of voters got the vote because of him. and they stayed with him his whole career. and then he applied that same logic to the country at large. host: how big did he lose in 1840? mr. widmer: pretty big. host: who beat him? mr. widmer: william henry harrison. a war hero from indiana. a westerner, interestingly. and a war hero who basically never said a word. and that was good politics back then. van buren did campaign for reelection. he gave speeches of a clearly political nature. he wanted it. he was out there giving speeches hoping to be reelected. but he had become unpopular with the panic and the growing

nervousness over slavery. harrison was a charismatic war hero. a brilliant strategy was created by political handlers around him that included slogans, toys, trinkets, mass-produced objects like whiskey bottles in the shape of a log cabin. because he was supposed to have been born in a log cabin. lincoln would later use that too. slogans like "tippecanoe and tyler too." songs, there were wonderful songs from the campaign of 1840. in a way van buren got out-van burened. he had been a political tactician of the highetst genius. they made politics

participatory and really fun. they made fun of him. there were songs that made fun of him. "van, van, he's a used up man." songs that made fun of the way he looked. questioned if he was a man or woman. did he wear a corset? there was a lot of vitriol and he came up on the losing end.

host: independence hall became a clothing store with a sign that read, we hold these trths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they can obtain clothing as rich and as durable as anywhere else in the nation? is that true? mr. widmer: yes it is. independence hall has been many things. it once was an art museum. a natural history museum. an early smithsonian. i was doing some recent research on independence hall for the book about lincoln that i am finishing up. amazingly, it was a jail for african-americans in the 1850's after the fugitive slave law was passed. african americans who were suspected of having running away from slavery could be rearrested, some falsely, and put in holding pens on the second floor of independence hall for re-export back to southern plantations. so all of our contradictions, all of our greatness as a people and our shortcomings as a people have been on display in that one building.

host: we talked some about what you have done. what are you doing now full-time? mr. widmer: i am a distinguished visiting lecturer at the city university of new york. i am in a place martin van buren would recognize. a lot of hard-working young people who see education as a great way to advance their own careers and expand their horizons in every sense. and it is a wonderful place to teach. and i am more of a teacher than i have been in a long time. i neglected to mention earlier that i was director of a couple of libraries also in my career. i did that and i love books and libraries. but i really love teaching. host: how long did you work for hillary clinton at the state department and how disappointing was it when she lost? mr. widmer: i did not work on her campaign. i was not involved in 2016.

i was surprised. like everyone i read all the polls and i thought she would win pretty easily. the polls were not even that close. i was living in washington when the election happened. i was working at the library of congress. i respect about your show that it is pretty nonpartisan. so i should not go there. but i was a democrat and i voted for her and i thought she would win. host: historians have helped us get to know alexis de tocqueville. you have a long passage about him. he came to visit when martin van burenw a was around. these are his words. "a native of the united states

clings to this world's goods as if he were certain to never die. he is so hasty in grasping all within his reach. one can suppose he is constantly afraid of not living long enough to enjoy them. he clutches everything. he holds nothing fast but soon loosened his grip to pursue new gratifications. a man builds a house in which to spend his own age and sells it before the roof is on. he plants a garden and lets it just as the leaves are coming into bearing. he brings a field into tillage and leaves no other men together the crops. he embraces a profession and the n gives it up." why did this passage get your attention? mr. widmer: i love tocqueville. i go back and dip in pretty

often. i think it is important for americans to remember that he pointed out our flaws as well as our strengths. he loved our strengths. we have a lot of them and he admired our democracy. he examined it more insightfully than anyone had to that point and maybe even ever than anyone has since. but he did see problems. and they are still with us. so we are not very good at sustaining attention. we get distracted pretty quickly. in that passage she is saying that we are just so obsessed with our possessions. having the nicest house. having the shiniest objects. having a second house. he would have totally understood the two car and three-car garage. he saw some danger in that. because what works is our fraternal values.

that is not a word you hear that often. "fraternity." but the way we looked out for each other. and there is a word often cited when it comes to tocqueville. "individualism." he apparently used that word for the first time. we have a lot of that. we care about our own well-being. what impressed him was that we looked out for each other. volunteer firehe house. education. get an education is free. what really has always come to our rescue is when we think in a united way.

when we are not just all about number one. host: as we get to the end, let me ask you this, england freed its slaves across the empire in 1833. mexico abolished slavery in 1829. and when did we? mr. widmer: not until the emancipation proclamation. and that was imperfect. it did not apply to the south. host: why were they ahead of us? mr. widmer: because we had a proslavery bloc that controlled congress. until it seceded. in 1860 and 1861. and it took the civil war to fix cost ofng at great blood and treasure.

the mexican war is not simply a virtuous triumph by a big successful democratic country against a third rate neighbor. it was pre-introducing slavery into a lot of a country that had got its act together and limited slavery. host: this is not a new book. you wrote this back in 2005. what did you think of martin van buren? mr. widmer: i liked him a lot more than i expected. i did not really seek this assignment. i'm not sure anyone would seek it. you are not going to get the big numbers writing about martin van buren. but first of all i respected arthur m. schlesinger, jr. the editor who gave me the assignment. and he liked van buren. there is a lot of van buren in his book about jackson. he appreciated the political

smarts of martin van buren. i thought van buren's failure was interesting. his success was a good thing. but his failure was interesting. he lost renomination on his views on slavery and about the panic. he got even more anti-slavery over the rest of his career. he might have come back for a second term later in his life but he refused to surrender some principles on slavery. so he is an interesting example of a former president getting even more interesting. we have seen that. we have seen a lot of former president remaining true to their conscience. going out on a limb on important principled topics. he is an early example of someone like that.

so all the way to the end he is interesting. i don't think you can find a president who isn't interesting. host: thank you for helping us with our series of presidents. this is from the times book series on all of the presidents. our guest has been ted widmer. mr. widmer: thank you. ♪ >> for free transcripts or to give comments about the program, visit us at qanda.org. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2018] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] after an almost seven-month journey covering 300 million miles, nasa's