Politics. Are you a classically trained historian. And it is fun to do that writing now and to be able to publish a book. We want to talk to you about that book, 101 president ial insults. When the concept come from . Many years ago, 30 years ago, i started to notice the relationship between these 44 men who served this president , sometimes Good Relationships, sometimes bad, sometimes they started out good and it went sour. Began collecting these quotations and started thinking about the political environment we live in today and this would be timely to demonstrate the fact that these quotes and the snipes by these men have been around since the founding of our country. A lot of these guys did not get along. They did not. Sometimes they got along. And the early part of their careers were great friends, collaborators, had a big falling out as they find themselves in different Political Parties and a dozen years before their death adams writes this wonderful heartwarming letter to jefferson and says you and i ought not die before we have explained ourselves to each other. And ignorant. Where did you find that . The interesting thing about that quote is it was just months after adams was elected and jefferson was elected Vice President. They didnt have a very Good Relationship with one another. Did that affect that administration . Absolutely. Just imagine today if we had a president and the Vice President from different lyrical parties. Thats going to totally shape the environment. It often seems at least from your book that president s who ran against each other or followed each other had a particularly better relationship. Absolutely, very well said. You can look at 1912 which prior to 2016 was the most bitter Vitriolic Campaign with ever seen. You had incumbent William Howard taft trying to defend the white house. Theodore roosevelt is running a democrat woodrow wilson. It was vicious. Especially roosevelt was quite creative with the things he lobbed against taft wilson got into the fray and taft fought back as well. One of the things i learned from the book is theres a lot of quotes that we hear or read about these president s have said about one another but you cant find them anywhere. One of them was in 1912 its reputed theater roosevelt said that taft had the brains of the guinea pig. Its a great memorable line, but its nowhere to be found, pole that i could find. Here you have theater roosevelt talking about William Howard taft as a fathead. Yes. Where did you find that . I was in a newspaper clipping from may 1912 i want to want to say, and both taft and roosevelt were making swings through ohio and the newspapers were reporting on what they said. You use a lot of quotes from Richard Nixon in his conversations with monica crowley. Yes. Thats when this was after his presidency, the nixon was more unfiltered perhaps or at least is coming out and we are getting a window into some of his thinking. One of the more unusual relationships is jimmy carter and gerald ford. Very Bitter Campaign in 1976. Yes, it was incredibly bitter. They hated one another, and yet when they both went to anwar sadat funeral, after the presidencies they spend a lot of time on the plate and realized they really like each other. And, of course, at gerald fords funeral, jimmy carter spoke and said probably no two president s have enjoyed such a close relationship as they did. They became very, very warm in their friendship. Harry truman is quoted a couple of different times. He was one to speak on the record i guess. You spoke on the record. Some of what he said was that contemporaneously. Unfiltered somewhat, and then a lot of it came out of a 1961 where he would talk about earlier president s and he would say i think you said Franklin Pierce was a complete fizzle. He definitely had choice things to say. Who was he talking about when he said this, this is harry truman again, he was the coldest man i ever met. He didnt give a damn personally for me or you or anyone else in the world, as far as i could see. Sounds like thats fdr, yes, yes. Why would you say that about his predecessor who appointed him vp . Fdr and truman had not much of relationship quite frankly. Truman was somewhat of a dark course becoming Vice President , and truman of course was only Vice President for a few months before roosevelt died in april april 1945. I think they met once during roosevelts fourth term. Who did the art in this book . Victor, we had a lot of fun talking about concepts and what it should be and they and i thd just a delightful job capturing some of these president or some of the more vocal outspoken ones and looking at quite angry. When we go through this book, our world today, its no different from is that . It is no different. Thats one of the things that ii learned from doing the book is that these insults have been around forever. The difference is that in the early days of the republic many of the quotes were written down in a private letter, in a diary, a a private conversation that somebody then reported on. Whereas today and increasingly so its been in books, speeches and now on twitter of course. I think today the level of what we see in the Public Square is much more vitriolic and much more intense and more frequent than what we ever had before, but its always been rather because this is politics. Given we are in a media area, people are not writing the letters the used to. Is it tougher for historian . I think it is definitely tougher. Because you dont get kind of the unfiltered thinking of these men and all you get is the posturing that comes out on social media. I think social media along with other factors is one of the reasons why we have such a polarized society, not only in social media but a lot of furor in our society and a lot of people who are afraid of seeing people who speak differently than they do, look differently than they do, a worship differently than they do. So all these factors combine and the speed of our new cycle just continues to escalate things. Prior to developing yourself as a president ial historian what kind of work were you doing . I worked for 30 plus years as a contracting manager for state and local governments in Washington State dealing with construction contracts, and consulting contracts. President ial history. Com, what would people point . They will find my blog where i include interesting things, the most recent one i did a guest post, the first time i did a guest post from someone from the Andrew Johnson National Historic site and she tells the story of how they found some new records from Andrew Johnson. These things are hiding in peoples addicks and museums at all. I have blogged there to guide a couple of videos that recreate what it would look like if modern day td newscasters were reporting on some key event in president ial history. Theres a lot of resources on their in terms of links to books come president ial sites, things like that. When you look over your shoulder at that building over there, what are your thoughts . I think about john adams statement when he writes to abigail and he says, so we lived in the white house for five months only, and he says may none but honest and wise men ever live under this roof. Or rule under this roof. So think about that and i think about the long tradition that we have in this country of the presidency. Heres the book. Its called 101 president ial insults what they really thought about each other and what it means to us. The author is mike purdy. Watch and extend we get a booktv holiday weekend. This is not a journalistic decision that was happening. We were told to cancel interviews with rape victims. We were told to stand down and not take a single call on the subject. I was threatened that i was going to be exposed as having been terminated and let go from the company if i ever disclose that indicate anything to do with the story. Sam houston once talked about courage. He felt he was impervious. He got shot three times and he should have died. He is lord courage has got to be chemically. When its time to get a commission because washington close to hear according to the map, burned to the printer what does he learn . This country is fragile and courage has got to be calculated. The number of black elected officials in this country has grown from fewer than 1500 in 1970, to more than 10,000 today. I think that is the Voting Rights act. Smoking at the turn of the 20th century and early 1900s was considered something almost unamerican. It was the right of the foreignborn. The antismoking movement of the first two decades of the 20th century kind of road that, a wave of nativism in thinking about what type
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