Books is doing on the president. I said i dont have time. He said i want you to do one thing. He said alan evans has done a paperback that excerpts his diary, his president ial direry. Take the diary. Take the weekend and read it. I read the excerpts from the diary and i couldnt say know no. I was fascinated. Did you know much about him . I knew he was a tennesseeian. Im a tennessean. I knew his grave shined the capitol. There is no marker in nashville except a plaque on the side of a dirty motel wall. His old home place in columbia is preserved and ive been there many times and been there since. I knew virtually nothing about him and almost nothing that was good. His reputation as a result of what was done to him during his presidency over the mexicanamerican war left him a bad reputation. A reputation as a warmonger and the attacks on him in congress in the latter days of his administration reminded me a great deal of the attacks on Lyndon Johnson at the end of his administration over the vietnam war. Similarities there. James k. Polk was president when . And tell us the four things he promised to do. Well go back over the details. What were the four things he promised to do . He was president from 1844, one year president by his choice, he said i will not run for election. And he would not accept any suggestion, and Many Democrats pushed him to run again. About the week of his inaugural he told his friend, George Bancroft who was to be his secretary of navy, great historian, he said bancroft, there are four things i want to do that will be my great measures one we will lower the tariff. Controversial issue. Two, we will create an independent treasury. Well take all the governments money out of these corrupt private banks which pay us no interest, and well put those funds in private vaults to pay the bills meet the payroll. Three, we will take california and well take oregon. That will make us from sea to shining sea. He said he would do it and did it. What right did we have to take either texas or california or oregon . Well, the oregon territory which was washington and oregon belonged to us jointly with Great Britain and he considered it part of the natural right of the american nation to take that contiguous territory. He threatened to go to war with the british over it. He bluffed them and said he was prepared to go to war over it. And at the last moment the british capitulated. California he had hoped that he would be able to purchase. Both henry clay, when he was secretary of state under John Quincy Adams and john tyler who was president immediately before polk was president , both had tried to buy california, the mexicans were insulted by both offers. And rejected blandishments by polk to give them the territory for money. So he went to war with them and took it. One of the things i noticed is theres some similarities to today. Very sharp similarities. The house of representatives 10810p with 24 independents. Was that when he was speaker or president . That was when he was speaker. He presided over the closest house at that time tillis. He presided over the closest house that time until history. And he had a terrible time as speaker. He`s the only speaker who became president of the United States. Nobody else has been able to make that springboard. As we speak, Richard Gephardt is trying but to be another leader of the house who went all the way. But polk did it. He was he presided over a hostile house. Members of that house constantly were trying to bait him into duels. A man named henry wise from virginia, called a dead shot and a man named Bailey Payton from tennessee, both despised him and both constantly harassed him from the floor and insulted him from the floor. At one point, they met him at the door, and wise said, you were very insulting to me today on the floor, and i mean it, and put and pocket it, he said. He was against dueling, would not accept the duels, would not challenge in return for an insult. And jackson, the great dueler, who wouldn`t take any insult he was jackson`s protege, and everyone said that jackson would be critical of him because he took those insults, but on the contrary, jackson said he admired his pacific attitude and courage in accepting leadership and not responding, as many did in that day. Cspan if he were here today, where would he fit . Guest well, he was we would call him today a yellow dog democrat. He was, i think, perhaps the most partisan president in history. Harry truman, another very partisan president , once listed his eight great president s, and polk was one of those. He lists them in alphabetical order jackson, jefferson, lincoln, polk but he does not list them as he rates them. But clearly, polk`s one of the top eight. I think that truman admired him truman said he knew exactly what he wanted to do, he said what he was going to do and he did it. And that made great hay with truman. He also was very critical of his generals, as truman was of douglas macarthur. And so there`s that similarity, too. But polk would have well, polk would have been right at home in today`s acidic washington environment political environment. I think that he would have been up to the needles and the digs and the knives that are wielded, and i think he would have waded right into that environment and been right at home. He was a man for his time. There`s very little you can say that he left. His administration was sandwiched between the only two whig administrations in our history, and both of those administrations the Harrison Administration and Tyler Administration were, of course, interrupted by the deaths of those two president s. And so those two whig administrations did very little and his administration is sandwiched between those, and he did a great deal. So it`s surprising to me that only historians recognize him. They they every 10 years there`s a poll, and he winds up somewhere between 7th or 8th or 12th. He`s never finished in those polls lower than 12th of the president s •great president s. Cspan i kept writing down words you use to describe him, and i`ll read a couple of them here. Perfectionist, micromanager, workaholic, a brooder, humorless, angry, arrogant, unforgiving, called himself the hardestworking man in the country, straitlaced, a little prig from tennessee. Guest a little prig from tennessee. crosstalk guest all of those you know, the truth of the matter is, brian, when i got through with this, i was not in love with him. I admired him for what he did. He was a toughminded president , and you know, he gave us a continental nation, and a dozen states exist because he took us westward. But he`s not the sort of fellow i think you and i would have enjoyed having lunch with, and certainly not dinner with. You wouldn`t want to go around the world on a tandem bike with him or even around the block probably. But nonetheless, i did come away with Great Respect for him, and while not affection, admiration, because he did great things. He his effort to finish the bank war that jackson had started jackson, his role model, his hero, his mentor, the man who really made him president. He really tried to model himself after jackson, and yet there were attributes of jackson`s character that turned him off. And so i didn`t come away really in love with him. I would have to say that i don`t like him very much. I don`t think he was a very likable man. And among other reasons, he just was duplicitous. He was he two or three times a week, they`d open up the white house and to everybody his worst enemies would come down from the hill. He and sarah, this lovely, congenial woman, would welcome them, his worst enemies. He`d make them feel like they were king for a day. And that night, he`d go upstairs, and congeniality and collegiality went out the window, and he would sit down with his diary and just rip them to shreds. He used that diary almost as a purgative. And obviously, it hooked me. It was the bait that led me to do this biography. It`s fascinating reading. Cspan how much of it did you read . Guest i read all of it. It`s four volumes. I read after i read nevins`s brief paperback, i then got the four volumes and pored over them, and i read them all. Cspan how much copy . I mean, how big were the four volumes . Guest well, each one`s about 400 pages, but there is you know, there`s some indexes in there and but each one`s between 300 and 400 pages. It`s a long read. But it`s conversational. And he was a good writer. He knew how to write a simple declarative sentence, and that`s what the diary is. And his that line you quoted, i think i`m the i know i`m the hardestworking man in america i mean, that sort of reflects the egomaniacal instinct that occasionally emerged. He said in another occasion in the diary, you know, i haven`t had the cabinet here for six weeks. I`ve learned i can run every department of the government without their help. And then he says, i`m the hardestworking man in america. The truth is, he probably was. He was a workaholic, around the clock, early morning, late at night, and very, very sickly during much of his administration. Cspan you graphically describe this when he was 17 years old, the operation he had. Guest oh, my god. Cspan now, where did you get that . Guest the story of that operation has been somewhat in question. Some of the earlier historians said that it was for gallstones i ran across an important piece in a 1980s Tennessee Historical quarterly by a medical doctor named robert icard. Bob icard wrote this piece, and he points out that we didn`t have a gallstone operation for 54 years in this country after polk had his. And he concluded it was for urinary stones. And there were documents that were left by from mcdowell the danville, kentucky specialist, one of the great surgeons in the history of this country. He left papers, and those papers icard relied on to demonstrate that this was really a urinary stone operation. And it was it was a brutal operation. Here`s a 17yearold young man, constantly, almost chronically ill with lowerabdomen pains. Finally, his father, who`s wealthy, decides the best man in the country is dr. Philip sing physic in philadelphia. And they put him in a covered and there were just a couple of physicians who were capable of doing this. I mean sam polk, his father, really made a search before he decided he wanted physicalic physic to do this. Mcdowell had been on his agenda. It was fortunate that mcdowell was as close to him as he was when they got him there. The theres no doubt in my mind, this is why i think the operation was important, no doubt in my mind he and sarah were childless as a result of this operation. I take it i take my conclusions on that one step beyond where bob left it although i know he agrees with that. And i created a panel of about nine doctors whose names are acknowledged in the book. Some specialists, some general practitioners, all thought it was very risky but all concluded after they looked at it that not much doubt that he was either left sterile or impotent or both. And so it was a childless marriage. You talk about him being sick and point out he was how long out of office after only one term that he died . He died 90 days after he left the presidency. He went home to die. He left the presidency worn and sickly. Probably contracted cholera either on the way home or after he arrived. It was a long trip. He went all the way south to new orleans and came up the river up the mississippi, and then down the couple berlin river arrived cumbe. R cumberlin. And he was welcomed home and he had 90 days of bad health and died. 53 years old. He at the time was the youngest president in history. And died younger than any president in history. This series, you mentioned Arthur Schlesinger times books, are they doing all 42 men . As of now there are 22 i think listed. I hope they do them all. I know that i had some conversations with my editor robin dennis, terrific editor, and during the course of the writing and the research i got into the issues involving his secretary of state james buchanan, who became president of course, and i in discussing it with the editor, she said, well i probably had better let the authors of the buchanan book know where youre going with this because well see where he comes out. N that. I just dont know where thats going to go or how thats going to come out. When did you start it . Two years, it took two years to do. To what lengths did you go to make sure you had the right stuff . Where did you go . I went everywhere i could possibly find sources. The best stuff is in the diary and in his papers. At t the best stuff is in the diary and in his papers. At the university of tennessee there is a historian, dr. Wayne cutler, who is the curator of the polk papers. And he has by the time he`s through, it`ll be 14, 15 volumes. But he`s spent decades just developing these really huge volumes of polk`s correspondence. And between the diary and the correspondence, you get a real sense of who the man is. There were three excellent biographies, one by john jenkins, which was done maybe 40, 50 years after his death another by eugene mccormack, which came in the `30s. And then charles sellers had a twovolume biography but stopped before he got to the presidency i`m so sorry he didn`t do the third volume because. Cspan sellers. Guest . Sellers because i relied on it very heavily. At times, came to different conclusions than all three. But i found i found that in the research, it was a chance to know a lot about people i never had looked at very closely people who made our country what it is. And it was necessary to read biographies of tyler and van buren and buchanan and others in order to fill in the foundation on which the biography had to stand. I mean, you couldn`t very well write a biography about polk who had almost routine conflicts with his secretary of state, without finding out something about that secretary of state. The same is true. Cspan james buchanan. Guest james buchanan. Cspan were you well, what was your reaction when you saw how much they fought . Could you do that today . Guest i cannot for the life of me imagine why polk put up with it, except that, as he said to his friend, cave johnson, shortly after he won the election, i intend myself to be president. You know, i talked to wayne cutler about this conflict cutler, who`s been looking at james k. Polk for all these years now. And i said, i cannot for the life of me figure out why polk kept buchanan as secretary of state. They were constantly at war. And cutler said, you know, he was the secretary of state himself, and he could control buchanan. Well, he could control him, but he couldn`t keep him from popping off or telling him he was wrong or even lecturing him. Cspan what did they fight about . Guest they fought about foreign policy. They fought i mean, a good example. He`s getting ready to he`s getting the british and the french are constantly meddling in u. S. Affairs. They`ve got interests in the middle of this country. And then there is mexico having this ongoing conflict with texas, with the republic of texas. And so there was a good deal there to formulate policy on. When it comes time for war with mexico, buchanan says in a Cabinet Meeting, you know, i really need to let the french and british know that in this war with mexico, we don`t have aims on california. Well, of course, polk had aims on california. It was contrary to everything his administration was going to be about. And he says, do not do that. I don`t want to i do not want you to tell them that. He said, well, if you don`t do that, you may have war with both of them. He said, i`ll go to war with them and fight to the last man before i`ll say that we have no designs on california. And so he was silent, buchanan was silent on the subject. But buchanan was buchanan was not very consistent as a secretary of state. For example, when it came time to take oregon territory away from the british, buchanan the issue was where at what parallel would we get the territory, if we got it . And if we went to war, we would get the 54th parallel, which is 5440 or fight. That was the cry in congress. The Tyler Administration left him with a proposal to the british to draw the line at the 49th parallel. And the british turned that flatly down, and it infuriated him. And he told buchanan, you go back and tell them we want it all. I`m paraphrasing here, but that`s just what he said. Cspan would the all be all the way up. Guest all the way up. Cspan . To the canadian boarder . Guest all the way up. In other words. Cspan would the all be all the way up. Guest all the way up. Cspan . To the Canadian Border . Guest all the way up. In other words. Cspan washington and oregon . Guest . You go beyond washington, up to the 54th. So buchanan says, you know, this will mean war. And he said, i don`t care. You tell them the offer`s off the table. We want the 54th parallel. We want as much as we can get. And he says as always buchanan had a fallback position. Buchanan says, mr. President you know, we`re about to have trouble with mexico. Why don`t we put this off. No. Tell them now. And he says, but we you know, we`ve got we`re very close to war with two countries here. He said, we`ll do our duty by mexico and Great Britain. We must look john bull in the eye, he says. And reluctantly, buchanan goes over and delivers the message and then comes back the next Cabinet Meeting and said, i did it. It was the wrong thing, but i did it. I mean, just right in the president `s face. You know, you did the wrong thing, making me go over there and say that. And believe it or not, polk comes right back and said, we did the right thing. It was right, and leaves it at that. It was a constant fight. It was a constant war. And then i question why, in my own mind, even after talking to cutler, even after knowing that he was controlling him, why he didn`t dump him. And then you run across this effort by buchanan to confront the president and say, do you really want me . And there`s a vacancy on the United StatesSupreme Court, and buchanan goes over and says, you know, i`d like that. Polk has a chance to get rid of him then, and he doesn`t take it. I mean, he almost he almost cajoles him back into the office. And then and then buchanan says, you know, there`s a wonderful lawyer up there, john mr. Reed. He was for you. He was for me. He`d be a wonderful justice of the Supreme Court. And he leaves there thinking that he`s made the case for his friend reed. And polk, without saying anything to him i`m sure i`m sure buchanan went out and told all his friends in congress, told reed, probably, you know, he`s goin