a perfect moment to talk about fdr.he man who lived in this house, franklin roosevelt, left to work for woodrow wilson as assistant secretary. eleanor became a red cross nurse. deeply admired wilson and deeply admired theodore roosevelt, as opposite as they were in their approach to the presidency and ability to communicate. roosevelt did find great things about wilson, found him deeply inspiring. i absolutely agree about the racism. and his relations with the press. the racism is deeply troubling, deeply ingrained. he was a southern man, and remembered hearing his parents talking about lincoln's election. it was deeply ingrained. he was the last civil war southerner to occupy the white house. brian: amity, legacy? amity: legacy shifts. someone might be enormously popular when they leave office, and 10 years later we say who was that? who was eisenhower,, until we got a few good biographies? i want to mention evan thomas's book. legacy is implicit in the other weightings. brian: question? >> another unexpected president

so, fdr put this house up for the staggering cost of $60,000.leanor prevailed upon hunter college to make a bid for the house. fdr lowered the price to $50,000, for a double townhouse on the upper eastside of manhattan. and it opened as a multi-faith, interreligious, multiracial place for the female students of hunter to study, to socialize, to join clubs. and it was that for many years, until the house began to run down, inevitably, because it wasn't well-maintained. and then under our hunter college president jennifer raab, money was raised to rehabilitate the house. and now it functions as a public policy center for undergraduates and a center for policy discussion like we are attempting to have tonight. brian: attempting? your question is. how about raising money in the name of calvin coolidge? and how do you maintain plymouth notch? ms. shlaes: well, but that's very difficult, because president coolidge was ambivalent about taking government money, especially federal money. and you can read it right in his autobiography. so the question is,

brian: let me go back to what i asked you about the fdr house.ow hard is it, and i'll ask both of you, how hard is it to maintain these institutions today? mr. holzer: well, we're very lucky at roosevelt house. when franklin roosevelt's mother died, he, i think, could not bring himself to return to this house. they were very, very close. and fdr put the house up for sale. eleanor had become very close to the students at hunter college. this house is part of hunter college, which is a part of the city university system in new york. she hung out in the hunter library. she brought hunter girls here for lunch. she only could make grilled cheese, but she made grilled cheese. [laughter] so fdr put this house up for the staggering cost of $60,000. eleanor prevailed upon hunter college to make a bid for the house. fdr lowered the price to $50,000 for a double townhouse on the upper eastside of manhattan. and it opened as a multi-faith, interreligious, multiracial place for the female students of hunter to study, to socialize, to join clubs. and it was th

the reason i say this is in 1944 all the democratic party bosses knew that fdr was a dying man.look no further than effective couldn't fathom the idea of henry wallace becoming vice president ascending to the presidency because they thought he was too liberal or soviet supervisor for both. they recognized the seriousness of fdr enough to take a provincial politician from missouri who hadn't thought much about the world who is a local machine character and through him on the ticket without thinking about whether he could govern, he was the best shot at making sure wallace wasn't on the ticket and fdr didn't care as long as whoever was thrown on the ticket with him didn't prevent him from winning the election. deep down he probably knew he was going to die. he thought he could power through, win the war, if the war ended before his term he could be the first secretary-general of the united nations. during truman's 82 days as vice president he meets with fdr twice, doesn't get a single intelligence briefing, doesn't meet a single foreign leader, is not briefed on the atomic bomb, h

what fdr did what teddy roosevelt did.of history. new york tough, yes, this is a tough situation, and yes, new yorkers are tough. we have shown how tough we are here. tough means many things, as i have said. loving, disciplined, and etc. tough is about courage. teddy roosevelt, "courage is not having the strength to go on. it is about going on when you do not have the strength." the day before, i cannot do this anymore, we have to do it more. we have to continue. and, this new normal, we are going to have to do it for a long time. they are talking about the fall and a possible second wave. we have to get back to activity, but we have to do it in a different way, a smarter way. maybe, a better way when all is said and done, and that is courage. teddy roosevelt was tough, and he leaned into being tough. he liked being physically tough. had a boxinglt ring built on the third floor of this house. and he would challenge the legislators during the day to come box with him in the boxing ring on the third floor at night. can you i

we have a great portrait from fdr that hangs in the drawing room. we have a great bust of teddy roosevelt done by baker, an extraordinarily gifted artist, we have great art all through this home. the new york state museum provides art, but we have pieces by durand, frederick church, and it is just, you can appreciate the scope of the home. but the whole first floor is magnificent, it can hold several hundred people and we do a lot of good work here. my mother did a restoration of the mansion back to the historical accurate portrayal when she was here, and it is still basically very much the same way. so, it is beautiful and open to the public. we have a website that people can go to and, it is really worth seeing. on the numbers today, the news is good news. is good news. it has been good news, but every day is a new day, and it is good to see continuing. the number of hospitalizations are down. the change in hospitalizations is down, into's is down. intubations is down. the number of new covid cases walking in the door, that is down, and the number

this is fdr, who died in his fourth term. the hole on the top of his head is pretty pronounced relative to the holes on the rest of their heads. i do not know why, but you can kind of see this deal infrastructure coming out of the top of it. he supposedly was a victim of polio. and the, i have read somewhere that some current physicians nowadays are not absolutely convinced that he had polio, rather a disorder called galen beret syndrome. regardless of the authenticity of that claim, the interesting thing about it is because he was either a victim of polio or purportedly had polio, that because he was such a high-profile individual, a lot of people say thousands of lives were saved because of the acceleration of the timeline and the appropriation of the funds that ultimately ended up in the vaccine created by -- . i thought that was an interesting tidbit of information. this is george bush junior. who is also highly decayed, if you can zoom in on his tie, you can see where he has these elephants, a lot of people love seeing t

fdr did not care and prevent him from winning the election.deep down he knew he would die but it was a question of the timeline. he thought he could power through the war if and before his term to be the first secretary general of the united nations. eighty-two days as vice president meets with fdr twice doesn't get a single intelligence briefing he is not briefed on the atomic bomb and basically out april 12, 1945 taking the last breath truman inherits one of the most overwhelming portfolios of any president in history with less preparation. the battle of okinawa is at its height the fiercest military the battle of all time and briefed on the manhattan project and what we can do with this destructive weapon that may or may not work. stalin is reneging on his promises from your one - - malt malta. he doesn't know where the countries are on the map he spent the first few days in the map room. then to deal with the reality he may have to move the million men and a massive bureaucratic battle that threatens the war effort and in the first four mo

. >> tonight we present nigel hamilton with his trilogy on fdr war and peace the final odyssey. his unpublished documents and interviews he rewrites a famous account of world war ii strategy given by churchill 75 years after the d-day landing we can see close-up and in dramatic detail who was responsible for rescuing and insisting upon france of june 1944. the coup d'État turns to personal tragedy over the course of the disease as he was commander-in-chief to prepare the united nations for the post world order. now we know even on his deathbed he was a great visionary. douglas brinkley says "war and peace is a masterful reevaluation. and pulitzer prize-winning co-author calls it a stunning achievement. hamilton commands his talent and meticulous historian and biographer as an intimate portrait of america's most consequential president. the most award-winning of jfk, jfk, and montgomery and president clinton among other subjects his most recent book the mantle of command was long listed for the national book award a senior fellow at the mccormick graduate school and splits his ti

you had grover cleveland, teddy roosevelt, and you had fdr, who's between fdr and teddy roosevelt, therethe two historic governors who went on. you had vice president nelson rockefeller also lived in this home. but it's very much a museum and it is beautiful. i don't know that you can fully appreciate it today, but we have great artifacts in this home. we have the wheelchair from fdr that he used when he was in this hou house. it's the wheelchair that he also would go into a pool, which is in the back of the house, which was a pool that he exercised in. it was very important for fdr, obviously, to keep his upper body very strong, he was holding himself up and swimming was his exercise. that's his wheelchair. we have a great portrait from fdr that hangs in the drawing room. we have a great bust of teddy roosevelt, done by baker who's an extraordinarily gifted artist. that's here. we have great art all through this home. the new york state museum provides art but we have pieces by durant here, frederick church. it's just -- you can't appreciate the scope of the home. but the whole first fl

it would be better if we had in fdr but we don't. we all need to step up, to play a role most people go on with their lives. they don't think it is up to them to provide a hypothetical outbreak, that is why i pay taxes. what we are seeing is you don't adequately fund them and insult them and berate them, no big deal until there is a fire and then you have a big problem. we need governance. in the absence of the kind of government we need we need to come together to make that happen and the same is true at a global level, not coincidental there's a total mismatch between the global nature of the problem we face in the way we are organized to face them and that is how we solve issues, not just deadly pathogens which are the ultimate transnational agents but climate change, destruction a oceans, all kinds of things because we live in a world the last few hundred years, the balance of power state model was inherently unstable, brilliant people like teenagers and, john maynard keynes in a different kind of world where we pull the national

1941 with a huge battle ahead and is not clear if that battle will be one that there were leaders like fdr and churchill who came together to say what we are fighting for and then we can organize around building that world. and annette political world what is exciting about this moment that we are all coming together with a little piece of fdr we are doing things that other governments may have done to provide support and hope and encouragement and that is incredible because yes we have a virus that is supercharged with globalization but the networks we are using to address the crisis are also moving at the speed of globalization communities like this. everybody is forming and reforming communities to solve these kinds of problems and the genome assistant others around the world are coming together to say how can we work together to solve this problem. with the genetics revolution and then the eugenics revolution the species has this ability to read and write the code of life and it's incredible when you think of it just one species and almost a godlike power that we have imagined and now

and fdr i guess was kind of breaking his chops and was in his office, joe, you want this job, right? well pull down your pants i've got to look at your legs because you know, your legs are-- >> and he knew that joe was knock-kneed, but that was a thing in english owe society, you'd have to show your legs and he was more than anything else having fun with joe. >> so were those liquor sales where he made a lot of his money legal or illegal? >> i think they were illegal for the most part, yeah. >> what did the boys bring from joe? as far as motivation, as far as-- >> i think the same thing. i mean, ironically he-- once joe and john were, you know, had to go into world war ii, he didn't want them in the war. he wanted them protected, but they were both-- they had their father's desire to go out there and do it. take risks. so they both wound up doing dangerous things and joe, several flights and finally got shot down and that's in the book and once again, that's-- we try to deal with-- i try to deal with each kennedy in the book in terms of, there are three or four chapters on young joe

you had grover cleveland, teddy roosevelt, and you had fdr, who is between fdr and teddy roosevelt, theyors who went on. you want vice president nelson rockefeller lived in this home, but it's very much a museum. it is beautiful. i don't know that you can fully appreciate it today, but we have great artifacts in this home. we have the wheelchair from fdr that he used when he was in this house. it's the wheelchair he also would go into a pool, which is in the back of the house, which was a pool that he exercised in. it was very important for fdr to keep his upper body very strong, and swimming was his exercise, and that's his wheelchair. we have a great portrait from fdr that hangs in the drawing room. we have a bust of teddy roosevelt, which was done by baker, who was an extraordinarily gifted artist. that's here. we have great art all through this home. the new york state mu seemed provides art, but we have pieces by durand, by frederick church. you just can't pressure the scope of the home, but the whole first floor is just magnificent. it can hold several hundred people. we do a lot o

so he experimented with television the same way fdr experimented with radio and this is on purpose.ve and we need to pick up where he left off and take the presidency into the next chapter with television. and so there are a variety of different tactics that he introduces. and in 1954 there is the first televised cabinet meeting and this is available through the c- span archives and i would show you a clip but it is incredibly old and it is not as effective. he was reluctant to have a televised cabinet meeting, that his press secretary said this is a great opportunity and james hagerty said that television allows you to go to the people and go directly to them without them having to read slanted stories by the press. so the same way to use a new medium to bypass critical coverage in the press and allow eisenhower to connect directly to viewers. so he tries televised cabinet meeting, but the issue with that is that it was incredibly skrip did and as you can imagine they set up cameras and they had scripts that they were reading and it was clear that this was scripted. and they talked

and so he experimented with television the same way thatri fdr had experimentedme with radio.ntgomery talks about in internal memos, he says, fdr was verywher innovatie and we need toth pick up from where had eleft the president -- where he left off and take atthe presidency into the next television.th he has a lot of differentthe tactics that he introduces. in 1954, there is the first meeting.sed cabinet this is also available through the c-span archives. i would show you a clip, but it is incredibly muddled. i think that shows how it is not as effective. eisenhower was really reluctant to have a televised cabinetha meeting but his press secretary said that this is ag, great opportunity to, like radio before, james haggerty, his james hagertary said that television allows you to go to the people. quote, and go directly to themem without them having to warped and slanted stories by the press. so, again, that same way ofe using a new medium to bypass critical coverage inth the press and allow eisenhower to connect directly to viewers. so he tries a tell advised cabinet meeting.

we may not have an fdr or a churchill right now in our political world. but something that's exciting about this moment is it feels like we are dividing up that task. we're all coming together and everybody is a little piece of fdr are doing things that are governments and other times may have done like providing support, providing hope and encouragement and that's something that really is incredible because we have a virus that is supercharged by globalization. it's getting around the world because you are so many humans and we're so mobile. but the networks that we're using to address this crisis are also moving at the speed of globalization and that's something that's really incredible. communities like this and many others. daniel is a hub for all medical community. everybody is forming and reforming communities are looking at new ways to solve these kinds of problems. and the scientific community. george is a central hub of that. the jnana cysts and others around the world who are coming together as they have to work together to solve this problem. w

we had fdr start the march of dimes for childhood polio. absolutely different. this president has promoted the abbott test by brand name and now this medication. for those who think this gives them perhaps some invisible shield, one final warning from you, please, to the people watching. >> so there's no evidence that this medication is protective. we're studying it. right now if -- people need to practice social distancing. they need to wear the masks. they need to stand six feet apart, and we need to start building an infrastructure that can do case finding and tracing. in other words, we want -- the real important things going forward that we need to do is work together, city, state, state to state, so we can coordinate. if somebody is positive, we can find out who their contacts were, and we can track them down. that's where the hard work in the -- if we're going to open this economy, the best way to open this economy is set up a program that can track cases and monitor them so that we don't get a spread again. that's where the work is right now. >> doctor,

in some cases trump is just like fdr but absolutely not like fdr. because fdr sent our troops to d-day with maps, with leadership, with guns, to minimize the casualties. what trump is doing is talking out of both sides of his mouth pointing to maps and armor that the cdc is urging people to do today, as they open up from lockdown, and at the same time, just telling people to go out and ignore the cdc and their governor's directive. and that is what is so irresponsible about this. >> for all of the criticism that you've offered of the president, is there a country you can point to and say, now, there's the model that we should emulate? and if so, what is it? >> you know, i would say -- there's basically two basic models out there, michael. one is sweden which says we're going to keep the economy more open than not. but we're also going to close down colleges and keep high schools and k-9 open. encourage social distancing. but we're actually going to let our least vulnerable go out, acquire the infection. acquire the immunity for it and get herd immun

world war ii if you remember the japanese internment, that came from liberal minded leaders like fdr later they regretted that at the time there was a panic in the nation. we look back fondly at the productive history of world war ii but that was not a sustainable situation to have that much gdp devoted to military production. if this continues the way it is charted by the modelers the prices and just economic but you are already starting to see the social breakdown so within my circumference people are opening lv goal barbershops for the illegal daycare center theirs was to have take-out food but serving people sitting down. i talked to a lot of people from different varieties of life and the attitude is like the fifties that life is okay but i will not destroy my children's livelihood on the basis of an edict and i'll try to navigate around it and when a person is told one paper towel one toilet paper in one hand cleanser and then walk out with two because if i allow them to do it at least let me charge them and i can get the money if i say only one then they walk out with two so i

but we are not having that fdr moment yet where we say that we recognize that dignity, and we're goingeat people with that level of dignity. and just take, for example, the discussion you were having earlier. you know, people working in the meat processing and poultry, those are among the most dangerous occupations. they're poorly regulated. in the poultry industry, some people have had to wear diapers because they couldn't have time for bathroom breaks. and to have the president of the united states order you back to work as an essential worker and then take away the responsibility of your employer to ensure you are safe, that is an example of treating people without the kind of basic level of dignity. and the question for us is going to be not just do we have the kind of essential workers bill of rights that ro khanna and elizabeth warren have talked about which we should, but whether this is going to make us rethink our economic compact, whether we're going to have a greater economic dignity compact and have a new new deal. and i think if this moment doesn't push us towards that, i

many things with joe, to have a guy like that winding up running internal revenue and at one point fdr, this is a pretty amazing -- joe was sent over to be ambassador of england, the cyrus guy, fdr was trying to break his chops and he was in his office and said you want this job, pull down your pants, i have to look at your legs because your legs -- he knew that joe was locked need and that was the thing in english society, you would have to show your legs with shorts and whatever but i think he was really more than anything else having fun with joe. >> were the liquor sales where he made a lot of his money legal or illegal. >> i think they were illegal. >> what did the boys bring from joe. >> as far as motivation. >> i think the same thing, ironically once joe and john had to going to world war ii he did not want them in the war, he wanted to protect it. they had the father's desire to go out there and do it and take risks, they both wind up doing dangerous things and joe, several flights and he finally got shot down and that's in the book and once again, i tried to do with each kenne

, this is really pretty amazing, joe sent them over to the ambassador to home of the irish guy and fdr was in his office and said you want to stop, all right, put on your plans, i have to look at your legs because -- the new joe is not me. but that was the thing in english society, you would have to show your legs with shorts but i think he was really more than anything else having fun with joe. >> were those liquor sales where he made his money legal or illegal. >> i think it was illegal for most part. >> what did the boys bring from joe as far as motivation. >> i think the same thing, it's ironically, once joe and john had to go into world war ii, he did not want them in war, he wanted to protect them. but they were, they had the father's desire to go after him doing, take risks, so they both want to bring very dangerous things and joe, several flights and he finally got shot down, that is in the book and once again we try to deal with each in terms of three or four chapters on young joe and take you right to the point where he has a tragic accident and meanwhile, john goes off and w

so he wanted to reclaim that term which fdr had perverted. newspapermen in oregon in 1938, frank -- frank jenkins said how is the republican party , to consolidate sentiment and defeat the radical new deal? he answered by embracing free , as for many enterprise. , glenn frank who was an important figure in republican circles, president of the university of wisconsin and hopeful for political office who tragically died in an accident. you can see how thoughts were changing about the possibility of realignment from what he said between 1933 and 1940. in 1933, he said hope for a conservative republican party and a liberal democratic party have gone into the waste bucket of forlorn hope. by 1940 he said "we may be heading into a different situation because of the extreme so-called liberalism of the democrats." that is getting a little ahead of the story which starts with the free enterprise battle of the new deal. against the new deal. that is what i'm going to turn to. for more than 80 years the idea of free enterprise, despite being ill defined

fdr dies in 1945 but we know very well what he says and i argue if lincoln does not survive his train trip, and then when the civil war and in the process revitalize all of those ideas about democracy specifically soaring language of the declaration of independence which is a document about human rights in addition to declaring the right to form a new country. it's also asserting the right to all human beings for foundational human rights. if lincoln does not get off the train live, i am not sure how world war ii turns out for the united states or the world. we are fighting that war with an equally powerful southern version of ourselves, that still has either real slavery or some modernized version of a wage slavery we are not able to inspire the world's people to fight in world war ii the way we sit successfully did. and very aware we've often fallen short of our own standards and we have since them in vietnam, iraq, and i'm very aware that other countries often hold that up against us. but still, the fact that we won a civil war to reassert a better version of ourselves and lincoln'

it was a field really built by fdr, reagan, lyndon johnson. in many ways, the reagan revolution is a response not to the new deal as much as it was to the great society. so it's a moment of enormous political import. the decision we're going make in november is extraordinary. also, for democrats who are very worried at this point, i would remind people that i can't think of an era of crisis except for 1864 where the incumbent governing party, in this case the republicans because they held the white house, actually won. and so this is a moment it seems to me to make a coherent case that there are answers here and that it's time to change the channel. >> and on that point, to bill kristol who you mentioned, joe biden is sharpening a message about what he calls a corrupt and failed trump recovery process. take a look. >> we're already seeing telltale hallmarks of trumpomics in the way he's going about implementing the crisis response efforts. no strings, no oversight, no accountability. i started to think of this as the corrupt recovery. >> bill?

by amazing fdr biographies doris kearns goodwin. i resonated so much with these heroic stories and that's why find writing biographies to be such an inspiring experience. brian: i want to go back to robert's book on james buchanan. all of you can jump in on this. he waffled about everything. i picked this right out. why did you say that? robert: at some point, the buck does stop. the president is the point where it has to stop. presidents great made the decision. they were not all great decisions. i would say the japanese internment was not a wonderful decision. but sometimes it comes to a head. buchanan was the ultimate diplomat. first of all, he was the best party giver of the middle of the 19th century. [laughter] there are positive things they did [laughter] -- positive things. [laughter] he was always trying to please people. he was a diplomat. he was ambassador to russia and england. , you know,ly good at having the czar over for lunch. like i said, there were certain things they were good about. but he did waffle. burke, the

i mean, fdr won 472 electoral votes to 59 of hoover.trump's worried about getting re-election right now, and what he hasn't done is put the people first. he is putting the economy but not seeing the link of public health and the people. sean penn was on with the -- the cuomo show. and he was exactly right what they are doing. we have got to be testing. trump has reneged on doing massive testing in the country. so individual communities got to step up and hit high-impact places. because we can get people back to work like richard quest is saying. but if we have a second wave, people are no longer going to be back at work. so it's still all about testing, testing, testing, right now. >> all right, gentlemen. thank you so much. we appreciate it. have a great weekend. richard, stay on the mend. be safe, everyone. appreciate it. thanks for watching. our coverage continues. did you know that feeling sluggish or weighed down could be signs that your digestive system isn't working at its best? taking metamucil every day can help. metamucil supp

fdr also took it further, particularly as it applies to territories outside of europe. is research i am working on right now so i could talk about it at length. indeed, support for self-determination's and their incorporation into institutions of international governments where the two main elements of the international order that the united states did go on established at the end of world war ii. can i say world war ii here at the world war i museum? course, what fdr did not sufficiently account for his attention at the center of the u.s. advocacy, and the tension is this. what if a nation determines to take a path that is not aligned with u.s. interests? do your words, what choose when the principle of self-determination clashes with other principles that you hold dear? 1940's,by the late washington chose what it saw as the containment of cognizant what it saw as support for self-determination, most prominently when it chose to indochina,ench in and when the french lost the war from the united states took it over itself. in vietnam is just one example. throughout the

between fdr and churchill . the medications going back and forth between washington and london it was interesting reading a book about how the early conversations in dc when churchill first ventures into the office is about the drinking and sort of his putting him over the top of his personality i guess people were wondering, is a somebody we can take seriously. erik: people have have noted about churchill but, it is a mistake to ever thank that he was a drunk or alcoholic. he certainly was not. in fact is very close private secretary, wrote later on and he had never seen churchill drunk or even in any way limited by alcohol. and churchill himself said this taken a lot more than a whole that alcohol is taken out of me. this, he felt. one thing that certainly resonates today, churchill, and a lot of time that they had home checkers every weekend. between two country homes. he would have been very likely quite at home with this whole situation. host: i did not know this, was struck by an checker was donated by som

we talked about it already under fdr. we talked about it again under harry truman. here it is again with george wallace. leading conservative magazines described george wallace is brand of conservatism and nixon's adoption of it as a country western marxism. to romance these workers, nixon embraced key elements of london be johnson's great society vision. signing a whole bunch of laws that were passed by this democratic-controlled congress. i will read you the list of laws that richard nixon passed. richard nixon as a republican passed all of these laws with a democratic-controlled congress. republicans begin to complain after a while. here's a list of the things that richard nixon passes. he passes a national environmental policy act which created the epa, the environmental protection agency. he passes the clean air act. he passed the consumer protection safety act. the federal water pollution control act. the noise pollution control act. the equal opportunity -- equal opportunity employment opportunities act. the campaign act of 1971. the employment security act.

i mean, fdr won 472 electoral votes to 59, of hoover. donald trump's worried about getting re-election right now, and what he hasn't done is put the people first. he is putting the economy but not seeing link of public health and the people. sean penn was on with the cuomo show. and he was exactly right what they're doing. we've got to be testing. trump has reneged on doing massive testing in the country. so individual companies got to step up and hit high-impact places because we can get people back to work, like richard quest is saying. but, if we have a second wave, people are no longer going to be back at work. so it's still all about testing, testing, testing, right now. >> all right, gentlemen. thank you so much. we appreciate it. have a great weekend. richard, stay on the mend. be safe, everyone. appreciate it. thanks for watching. our coverage continues. to brai? unlike ordinary memory supplements neuriva has clinically proven ingredients that fuel 5 indicators of brain performance. memory, focus, accuracy, learning, and concentr

fdr, nine. william howard taft, six. go to dred scott. how that all happened during james buchanan. >> there is a theory that probably is true that buchanan wanted the dred scott decision to happen. what he definitely wanted was he came into office saying he was going to solve the problem of slavery. i do not know that he had a particular solution, but here was this case winding around. dred scott, the former slave, had gone up to minnesota with his master, comes back to st. louis. the master dies. he says he is free because he was living in the territories that were not supposed to have slavery. the court case comes. roger tawny is the supreme court justice. these guys are all related. the court is split 5-4. not conservative and liberal as today, but southern and northern. buchanan apparently had the discussion with tawney before he was elected and said, what are we going to do about this? he said, i cannot have a 5-4 major decision. no one is going to buy into that. if you can convince somebody to change his mind -- well, anybody here

>> there is so much just in the fdr years, which i know you've written a book about. the great depression and franklin roosevelt comes into office as the president who has to try to deal with this and people really did not know what tools to use. he and others in the administration went to work trying to figure out what those tools were and how to do it. they were confronted with something no other policy makers had been confronted with before. >> right. all the banks were closed, right? there was a run on the banks. there was a bank holiday that fdr declared almost immediately that was the first action of the first 100 days and it was a sense that we had to have what fdr had called a spirit of bold persistent experimentation. if we try a method, if it fails, admit it frankly and try something else but above all, try something. that was the roosevelt insight. but nobody knew if any of it was going to work. the line we all remember, right, is the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. name is unreasoning fear that paralyzes our best efforts and converts advance int

truman, the bookish kid with the glasses who read and learned leadership through reading or amazing fdr biographies about how another bookish boy found his life in books. but i just resonated so much to these stories and that's why i find writing biographies to be such an inspiring experience. >> going back to the book on james buchanan. i want you all to jump in on this. it doesn't have to relate just to james buchanan. he waffled about everything. >> right. >> i picked this out of our interview. why did you say that? >> at some point the buck does stop and the president is the point where it has to stop. and most of our great presidents, the guys you had up there, made the decision. now they weren't all great decisions. i would say that the japanese internment wasn't a wonderful decision. but, you know, sometimes it comes to a head and buchanan was the ultimate diplomat. first of all he was the best party give of the middle of the 19th century. there are positive things. he was a really nice guy. but he was always trying to please people. and he was a diplomat. he was an ambassador to

there was a bank holiday that fdr declared almost immediately. was the first action of the first 100 days. and it was a sense that we had to have what fdr had called a spirit of bold, persistent experimentation. if we try a moethod, if it fail admit it frankly, try something else, but above all, try something. that was the roosevelt insight. but nobody knew if any of it was going to work. the line we all remember, right, is the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. nameless, unreasoning fear that paralyzing our best efforts and converts advance into retreat. fascinating, isn't it, that he used the word paralyze because he himself had overcome paralysis. he thought he could help the country do it. that's the line that we remember. the line that got the biggest cheer on march 4th, 1933, is when he said i might require wartime-like executive powers as if we had been invaded by a foreign foe. and the crowd roared and mrs. roosevelt wrote in her diary that night that it child her to the bone because it felt as though the people might be ready for

you brought up fdr. fdr, to be fair, did hate the conservative press when he was president.hat fdr was able to do was keep his lip zipped in moments in which he knew that there were bigger issues out there. what is striking about trump is that you combine poor impulse control with a twitter account, and you get what you're seeing right now. which is, despite the fact we are experiencing, you know, a worse economic shock, which you could argue since the stages of the great depression, he is tweeting about cable news, obamagate. he is lashing out in any way he possibly can. he's doing this mostly because he's angry. he is like a toddler throwing a tantrum, in which things aren't going his way. his usual playbook won't work in this instance. if you flash back to last summer, when there were signs that the economy might be buckling, there was that moment where trump really did seem to think that, you know, if he projected confidence, the stock market would return. he could browbeat the fed into cutting interest rates, and everything would turn out well. to be fair to him, there

they were nonvoters in north, the midwest and west, and the fdr folk said hey, we -- these invention the south know the democratic party and the south as a part of slavery, segregation, jim crow laws, the klan, et cetera launched a public relations campaign. so fdr and his wife were doing this whole thing republic you do, meeting with like this, making sure prominent black papers in the time. eleanor was hosting either the wife's opponent black women. yet would not sure exactly in 32, but gallup started pulling and 35 and he got 76% of the black vote in 36. however, black individuals did not self identify as majority democrat until 48 with truman. essentially, a short version of the book is republicans dropped the ball, prince of movement dropped the ball. where not enforcing the 15th amendment, not supporting the civil rights act. and so, in other words, bill buckley is more concerned about polish shipyard workers than he was my mother and grandmother voting in elections in louisiana in the '40s to the 60. >> you write the following code, if donald trump wins 20 or even 30% of the b

in 1941, we had fdr. we had winston churchill. and if you wanted to have a better world, it was a pretty safe bet to say, well, i'm just going to follow them. we don't have those kinds of leaders now. at least, not enough of them. and so what people around the world need to do is to recognize that, if that's the world that we want to live in then, we have to build it. in the same editorial that you reference, i talk about this organization, this movement. that thousands of people now, in 90 countries of the world, have come together to create, called one shared world. and what we are doing is creating a global-social movement and political force, representing the common democratic expressions of humans, as a group. because if you ask anybody in the world, do we need a system that protects us from deadly pathogens? from climate change? ecosystem destruction? weapons of mass destruction? everybody would say yes. why don't we have it? and the reason is, there's a mismatch between the global nature of those problems and the national w

it's the supreme court and fdr and the new deal that even expanded the idea of interstate commerce.going to the president's powers. in 1937 -- i know, i know, this isn't hot stuff, but stick with me. in 1937, what does the court say? intrastate activity, activities in the state that have such a close and substantial relationship to interstate commerce, that their control is essential to protect the commerce from burdens of obstructions are within congress' power to regulate. so it for state even within the state congress is regulated that it harms or affects interstate commerce, only congress has the power to regulate that according to the supreme court in 1937, the new deal and fdr, i'm not seeing the president is regulating it, and saying the president as the head of the executive has the power to enforce that. the big daddy decision was in 1942. you know what they said there? it was such an outrageous decision.ha a farmer grew wheat on his own farm, consumed it t on his own farm, it never touched interstate commerce and here's what the court said. that still can be regulated by c

fdr in 1942 put a cap on -- [inaudible] anything over $25,000 a year, 100% income tax. it only lasted about six months because there was a huge reaction but it was popular. so we need to think about this is something we should urge the democrats and progressives need to take a stand on right now these two issues, public development of life saving drugs, big pharma. but in the meantime, the three democratic presidents -- access profits tax. >> okay. i want to get back to this question of demands strategy, resistance. but it's about 6:40, halfway through this, and we wanted this to be a real back-and-forth with folks or tuning in, and we've gotten a lot of questions, really smart, important questions from folks some going to group a couple of these and some of it takes a back to the earlier points that you're hitting, but that's good because some people might be turning halfway through. a couple of people asked about the global rollout of this pandemic both in terms of its impact and thin the kind of responses we're seeing to it. example nick james asked why and how has i

now, fdr will be remembered for saying you have nothing to fear but fear itself. harry s. truman will be remembered in history for saying "the buck stops here." this man is going to be remembered in history for saying "you can inject lysol." you have to ask why he would persist in this course. he is trying to restart the economy, regardless of the cost in human lives because as phil rucker and his colleagues in "the post" reported, he wants to set him up for the 2020 election. now, in that regard, let's look at what we know. we know that 6 out of 10 americans disapprove of this president. we know that 4 out of 10 americans do approve of his actions. that means that he can be defeated if democrats run the race that is waiting to be run, and the only strategy that the republicans have is to demonize joe biden in the next couple of months. that means joe biden has got to come out of his basement, and i would like to urge him to read, as i'm sure he has, david axelrod's article and david plouffe's article in "the new york times" article this morning that says this election wil