[inaudible conversations] good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, absolutely delighted to welcome you here, a special thank you to alma, that mall and joe for their sponsorship of our monthly book series. And cant hear me in the back . Theyll turn up the mook crow phone a little bit. I think were set now. This is a historic book talk here because its actual through the last one were going to have at these offices. I think some of you are aware, the institute is moving to new digs, a few blocks away in the west end. So our next session like this will be there, at 2300m street. January 22nd with David Ignatius and i hope well see many of you at that time. I also want to welcome all of our guests watching this live streamed and especially our many guests watching this on cspan. Also, a very special welcome, were delighted to have 25 students here from washington latin school. Washington latin high school. And i think i was discussing this with bob dallek how appropriate it is to have a group like this because as he notes in the press preface of this book in the time of demoralization, and despite the many fine biographs to which, by the way, he gives enormous and clear and explicit credit in this book, that theres a concern that the younger generation, with limited knowledge of American History, is increasingly unaware of what Franklin Roosevelt did for the nation and for the world. And also, to demonstrate weight great president ial leadership is like and rekindle faith in young people that n the belief that such leadership is possible. Our guest need little introduction especially near washington. One our countrys greatest political biographers and historians, bancroft prize winner for an earlier book on Franklin Roosevelt and his foreign policy, author at least a dozen pie going graphs biography including kennedy, truman, nixon, johnson, and reagan, and as i said, an absolutely wonderful book. Like many in this room, i think you have probably read other biographies of frank frank and i encourage your to read this one, despite its heft, you wasnt be able to put it down. And it guess obviously while much. It talks about his time in the white house, it of course begins with his Hudson Valley childhood, his days assistant secretary of the navy, his time of battling tamny hall in new york politics and as governor of new york, and of course, much of it focusing on his stewardship of two of the most challenging periods in American History, the Great Depression and world war ii. Lets discuss our High School Students. Why another biography of Franklin Roosevelt. Let me say how much i appreciate that nice introduction, and it makes me think of one i received a number of years back when i was lecturing in the soviet union. My host on that occasion, who i like to think had command of the english, introduced me by saying author of the kind of book that once you put them down you cant pick them up again. [laughter] i will say, cant resist saying that here we are at this historic moment when this will be the last of the sessions in this room. Reminds me of some people occasionally say to me, glory history and i say, not yet. Get back to your question, you quoted what my feeling was as i went to work on this book, that roosevelt has been a removed figure for many people in this country, particularly young people. I deach at Stanford University and they dont remember reagan was president. So, roosevelt is like ancient history with them. And people are so down currently on politics, and on the presidency also because what is so striking to me is the fact that donald trump has never achieved a 50 Approval Rating in these over ten months now that he has been in office. If you go and look at the gallup polls, Franklin Roosevelt, 12 plus years, never went below 50 . It was really an extraordinary achievement, and so i think its important for people to recall what effective, great leadership could look like, and roosevelt has limitations. He was not a saint, and we can talk about these flaws and missteps, but by and large, he was a transforming leader and really quite extraordinary. We will talk a little bit about some of those flaws, perhaps a little later, but you also quote early in the book the New York Times, upon his death, and the New York Times hardly sick said, men will thank god on their knees 100 years from now that Franklin Delano roosevelt was in the house. Extraordinary statement, and that 100 years is just few decade away. Are you confident that his position is secure, will remain secure in the pantheon of american greats and even world greats . Well, first of all, i think one of our three great president s of American History, along with George Washington and abraham lincoln. So, what makes him so extraordinary . When he came into the presidency in march of 1933, the country was in miserable shape. 25 thief work force wheres unemployed. There was starvation, men who would gather at garbage cans out of restaurants at 10 00, 11 00 in the evening in order to find scraps of food because they were so impoverished they some middle class men selling apples with five cents apiece on street corners. Now, when roosevelt came into office, he wasnt sure what he was going to do but he understood that he needed, first of all to generate renewed hope in the American Economic and political system. Remember, this is a time when you had mussolini and fastism in italy and he made the trains run on time. Hitler had taken power in nazi germany, stalin was crowing about the five year plans and the achievements in the soviet union, and so there was a lot of talk about the idea that this american system of government, politics and its economy, could not last, you see. Roosevelt refuted that. He didnt end the depression. Industrial mobilization did that in 19391940. But he did something i think more important. He humanized the American Industrial system. He put into place Social Security, the federal deposit insurance corporation, the civilian conservation corps, dams that were built across the country. You can go to the midwestern universities at indiana, and you see a building that was a Student Union building that was put up by the wpa and it says, john carm usedy, direct you of wpa in 1937, when it was they put up the building but he created a base with Unemployment Insurance and Social Security and a sense that people should be the great priority of the Economic System in this country, and its worked ever sense. Who would take away Social Security now . Maybe donald trump. I didnt say that. Who i would take away Lyndon Johnson heroics protege, would his protege, would put across civil rights, medicare. Part of this system of humanizing the American Industrial system. It saved our economic and political system, i believe, because people were signed on it to. Last point, he used his fireside chats. He was brilliant at connecting to the public. And after he died, somebody stopped Eleanor Roosevelt on the street and said to her issue miss the way your husband used could speak to me about my government. Can you imagine anyone saying that about any politician now . Its remarkable. Or the man who stood by the Railway Track as the body was being transported from warm springs, georgia, back to hyde park, and he stood sobbing and somebody next to him said, did you know the president . And he said, no, but he knew me. What a telling way to describe the extraordinary connection that he made with people, and it sustained him through the 12 plus year, and this was not a man who was in particularly good health. He was immobilized. He had to sit in the chair all day long, and i found one letter in which he said to somebody, you know, congressman, when youre frustrated you can get up and walk about and walk off some of your anguish, he said. Im stuck in this chair all day long. He never would have said things in public that he might talk about in private. The way, for example, he said about Adolph Hitler in 1938 after crystal knock, this man, he said, is a maniac with a mission. He wouldnt say that in public. But we had this information now about how he would talk in private particularly to his distant cousin, margaret, whose diaries were published and wonderful material in there about how the he would talk to her, and he would say to her things like, days. Tell you this, i know you wont repeat it. I only tell it to you. Well come back to so many of these things, including daisy and including eleanor and of course, the fireside chats. You describe its so hard for anyone to appreciate any of this just what the country was like and then it was fourmonth between between election and inauguration, and in the time after hoover, in that fourmonth period you have an extraordinary quit one someone said ever been a period comparable could those four months in terms of the level of despair and he said, yes, and it lasted 400 years, and it was the called the dark ages. So you sort of alluded to thus. When we came into the white house and then before those extraordinary 100 days when he signed 15 extraordinary bills, he didnt really have a plan. What was how was he successful when he had no secret plan . Trump said he had all kind of secret plans. President roosevelt never said he had a machine yet he convinced the American Public he knew what he was doing. How did hoe do that . He began with his campaign in which Herbert Hoover said he was a chameleon, and what it remind met also of the story my friend arthur lessinger told me about john kennedy. Kennedy invite him to be the white house and lessinger said, what are we doing and kennedy said, i dont know, arthur. I dont even know what ill be doing there but government is eight hours a day, and it was an honest statement because they were pragmatists, people who responded to shifts and maneuvers and changes and also he was a brilliant politician in the sense that he could manipulate there was a certain deviousness to him. For example, the big any big uat the time was the protective tariff that seemed to remote at this point, but roosevelt told this brain trust to write two speeches, one for high tariff and one for low tariff and this is in days before the internet, or television. He would go out in a high tariff area and give the high tariff speech and the low tariff everywhere, the they would say to him, what are you going to do . He said ill show you. Tend of the talk people in the crude for high tariff, that that is the definition of a damn good politician. She was incredibly pragmatic and he was responded to fishes as they arose. The fireside chat he gave was about the banking crisis, because there was no federal deposit insurance corporation. That was anen advantages invention of the new deal and people were losing their life savings. Roosevelt gives a speech in which he says were going to have a bank holiday. Doesnt talk about a crisis, a malaise, and instead well have a holiday go out and have a good time. And what the great columnist said overnight the news the country had shifted. It was an increase in hope and expectations that the system would sustain itself. That was 1929 and also probably the first time that most americans ever heard the voice of a president. Thats right. At that time, of course. So, as an institute among many other things we focus on leadership and what it takes to be a great leader and one thing that is remarkable one this remarkable about roosevelt is how he managed to balance attacks he was attacked on all side, by the left, from the right. Most over the newspapers in the country were against him. America had this extraordinary antipathy toy collectivization or fear of socialism and you described something that i think many of us think is new when you describe the deep Cultural Divide between urban and rural america, modernists and fundamentalists. How did the find Common Ground and get to that kind of popularity . Its really such a good point because he was mindful of the divide in the country, and in 1924, when the democrats tried to put up a okayed at candidate, it took 103 ballots before the settle on a man named john d. Davis from west virginia, who nobody remembered now certainly, and was a nonentity, and it was because of that deep divide between the modernists and i to fundamental lists of the south and the north, you see. Roosevelt brought people into his administration, he dealt with the southern segregationists who were running the committees in the house and the senate, and he would the fact that he could not for the High School Students might not remember, the south was his base. Thats right. The democratic south, solid democratic south, and the would win their support. What was so interesting is that he never went out of his way to work especially hard for africanamericans. Didnt support the antinoosing legislation at that time kept coming up in the congress. By the end of his presidency, however, africanamericans had shifted to the Democratic Party, and the saying was, turn lincolns face to the wall. And that roosevelt and the democrats. Somebody said to me, which is marvelous, a folk song by a black singer, folk singer, and its called Franklin Roosevelt, the poor mans friend. And africanamericans were taken moved to the Democratic Party by all those programs for which they received certain benefits, and as roosevelt said, better a government that lives in a spirit of charity than one frozen in the ice of its own indifference. And he connected to people with that kind of language, and those options there was substance to it. Wasnt just rhetoric about how he was going to make the country great again. There was real substance do it which changed peoples lives. A very large portion of the book is focused on his second term and you talk about the second term curse. And it if it had not been for the onset of the war, he might not have been reelected. Want to just tell us a bit about the dynamics in the second term. Sure. The second term, he began by making the misjudgment of trying to put across the packing plan, and it never went through. Because the Supreme Court was invalidating many of the key element of the new deal and he was afraid that the court would invalidate all of it. Yes and the new deal be vetoed, by the Supreme Court, particular he thing a actual tour and the National Recovery act and he was worried that this could he wanted to put liberal justices on the bench who would then vote to support these new deal measures, and you have to understand the expansion of First Authority under his leadership, but he had the model before him of Theodore Roosevelt, his cousin, and making the government the center of Political Authority and action in this country, and he was these were his historical examples he was following through on this and beth tr and roosevelt were still quite popular and he was able to sort of operate in their shadow, but theres no question that the recession that hit the country in 37 and 38 and the attempt to purge the Democratic Party of conservative southerners in particular, that failed, and so by 1939, even though he still had 50 Approval Rating this likelihood he could run for a third term and break the twoterm precedent was just out of the question. But along came the war, and people were afraid, reluctant to shift to another leader in this perilous time. Well come back back to the. Lets turn to how you describe the personal history and the emotional and personal dimensions of his life, and first of all, you talk about describe the childhood and it was a childhood where he was not especially noted for his brilliance or extraordinary qualities either at the school or at harvard, all now although you say there were signs about his extraordinary selfconfidence and selfreliance. So, there were no signs as a man in his teens and 20s that this was going to be on of the great men of the century. In fact, at harvard he was described as a fairy duster, someone who is shallow, who is a patrician, who was self selfselfindulgent but he had the model of Theodore Roosevelt and the strenuous life, and the idea that he was entitled to lead the country somebody said later that Franklin Roosevelts idea of the presidency was fdr in the white house. And he was the one who justifiably should be setting in the office. He had selfconfidence that allowed him to confront the big issues. So, why did a patrician choose to go into politics . There were some signs in here, he was bored with money and snobbery and pretention, and he could have had such an easy life after columbia law and stale in new york and making money and going up to hyde park. Socially after his polio, stricken at the age of 39 in 1921, and his mother wanted him to good back to hyde park and just be a kind of. Aristocrat. Just took it easy and they had enough wealth and but he was determined and so was eleanor, and so was a man named louis howe, who was his principal political adviser, and eleanor played a huge part in moving him forward, in supporting him, despite the fact