Know scott does, too, with the letters and diaries in private journals so when i found these letters, i realized they had become friends in the early 30s. An odd couple. Teddy marched around everywhere during wrestling and boxing. Weighing between 250 350. Not doing much wrestling or boxing at that time but they liked each other. Opposites almost attractive. So he brings him into his cabinet and becomes the most important person in his cabinet. They want him to run against taft in a Brutal Campaign and because there are two republicans running so then he runs on the bull moose thirdparty Campaign Opening the door for the democratic win so the heartbreak was much greater because of friendship was stronger i love writing about these emotional things it was more than a straight linear story. Woodrow wilson came into the picture and then went back to progressivism. Wilson went back to progressivism big time taking the foundation that was there and built upon it. And what wilson wanted to do because most peoples image wilson is a presbyterian minister son. When he was human and emotional and passionate where he wanted to do was humanize the presidency so where Theodore Roosevelt created a relationship with the press , Woodrow Wilson wanted to advance that so we started to hold press conferences which a president had never done before it was toward personalizing the white house so wilson came in with the most aggressive and Progressive Agenda we have seen. He brought it about largely through the process of humanization and by showing up at the congress. Wilson had an extremely peculiar view how the legislative branch and the executive branch should function. Being a political scientist , get ready, he thought they should cooperate. [laughter] [applause] think of it. He thought literally they should co, operate the government so wilson did something nothing is happen he showed up in the congress to conduct business and brought back the president to deliver state of the union and delivering 25 addresses to joint sessions of congress and actually showed up in a little room that sits in congress designed for president s to come and work with the congress. I think a lot of president s have failed to find this room. [laughter] im not naming anyone but it has a rather tricky name. It is called the president s room. [laughter] lbj found it. Yes he did. Big time. Thats why so much legislation was passed. Johnson in many ways was in the wilsonian tradition to get in and roll up your sleeves cracking if you legs and arms and thats what wilson did and we immediately saw within the first few months of the Wilson Administration and the lowering of tariffs the introduction of the modern income tax so the richer paid more and the establishment of the Federal Reserve which is the basis of the American Economy for the last century. Putting the first jew on the Supreme Court. Progressivism for wilson was about leveling the Playing Field he was not anti wells or wall street he was antitrust and against unfair competition anywhere he saw it he try to fight it. You both alluded to there are a lot of parallels between today and those times are we in another gilded age . One of the things that produce the great gap at the turnofthecentury that the old economy shifted if you are living in a country town the richest person could be the doctor or lawyer now suddenly with a massive trust forming with the railroad spinning the country and railroad you have landlords. So the pace of life had sped up with telegrams replace replacing letters when people said there were nervous disorders because of the pace of life was sped up think about it today but yes we are in another gilded age but it is that mobilization of the country that this is not seemingly emerged so as a result of not even sure the bully pulpit has the power that it did in wilson and teddys time it would become a common conversation. Even when fdr went to fireside chat 80 percent of the people listen you can walk down the street and not wonder what he said everybody was listening to the radio. By Early Television you would hear the whole speech now the media is divided the National Newspapers that came along in my time even sometimes i write check i write 1913. [laughter] the National Newspapers that emerged replace the Partisan Press in the old days you would only read your newspaper lincoln gave a great speech carried out on the shoulders of his people and they booed and hissed him with the same speech and now here we are again divided media only watching your own station you only hear a part of the speech and our Attention Span has so diminished and what i wrote about him he was given two years to write 50000 word pieces month after month and people read them and talked about them im not sure if anyone is given that amount of time today and the expense accounts and their camaraderie and the Attention Span. So i went over the country is going with our influence on the government mccluer said theres no one left but all of us sometimes i think thats true for us because we just complain and we havent figured out how to do something about that paralysis. That fragmentation will only continue because people make up their new media all the time its a fact free media happening all over the place. How was wilson treated . Pretty well especially by many of those like baker. Is my favorite. And to spend his final years not only working for wilson but and eight volume biography of wilson he so adored him. One of the most glorious pieces was rich and that in fact it was so wonderful i would not quote him because it made me look to partisan in wilsons favor. But its true what you are both suggesting about the great sexualization of the media because what we have lost any reticulated, we dont think anymore we just react from the guy and thats why we flocked to that cable station that says what we think even though we havent thought it yet. [laughter] but that is a big factor today. Wilson had a very Good Relationship with the media up to the First World War which wilson ultimately brought us into and one of the great ironies in wilson story that the most progressive president we have had to date but this president became the most progressive of the press which he did during the war to revitalize the alien and sedition act that was quiet certainly since the days of adams but then brought back wilson used to cite lincoln all the time. People have asked me what would Teddy Roosevelt have done in todays world of twitter. I thank you would have loved it. His great strength was to reduce complex problems. Everything that he said that was fairness, not going after the rich, not going after the poor to say the rock on the country is founded but speaks softly and carry a bigs deck. Said he drank 40 caps of coffee a day. Even gave Maxwell House the slogan good to the last drop. And you cannot shut him up. [laughter] he loved to be in the center of things. Both his strength and his witness. He was to be the baby at the baptism and the corpse at the funeral and the bride at the wedding. [laughter] this made wilson crazy. He thought ter was a caricature of a man somebody once pointed out to tr colonel roosevelt even wilson have the same objectives in the same principles you are so much alike why do you attack him every day . Roosevelt said i guess hes just the weaker version of me. [laughter] thats great. He was from princeton before he was president so did that ivory tower environment help with his governing . That helped him in a positive way very much because he was trying to tear down the ivory tower. Wilson was the relatively poor son of a presbyterian minister and went to princeton in new jersey and there he found a very exclusive campus he presented it as an undergraduate and as a professor and then became president of the college and at this time decided now i have the ability to change what this colleges. His predecessor was a man who used to brag he ran the finest country club in america. He did. Question this was for the sons of the very very rich and wilson tried to tear that down and in doing that this is how the most meteoric rise in American History occurred because people began to look at wilson to use the princeton campus is a great metaphor and believed Higher Education should be the great catapult for people that anybody from any class anybody who is educated and works hard should be able to leapfrog on the latter. He became so famous that the political bosses in the Democratic Party were attracted to him thinking he was the perfect combination to be there puppet he sounded very progressive best but also a professor so he would be very weak. But once elected governor of new jersey and served 18 months, the first thing he did was take out the very machine that put him in office. Everybody saw this was not a week puppet professor. Lets turn to the women behind the man like i wanted my husband to be more like nancy reagan. [laughter] there are three women im writing about. And they each made choices they had to make even if there were narrower choices. Edith roosevelt came from a family her father was wealthy and lost to shipping business and became an alcoholic. She lived very near teddy and then moved to a more modest home. She loved teddy from the time she was young. They were girlfriend and boyfriend through college. They had a fight they broke up and he fell in love with a girl from boston. He married alice and then she died in childbirth a few years later. He went to the badlands depressed the light had gone out of his life but he married edith and it was an extraordinarily strong and joyous marriage. All she wanted was to give companionship and strength and a sanctuary to her ever restless husband. She said she would not give her views on political opinions what mattered for a woman was only to be in the newspaper twice. When you are married and buried. She was little known by the public at large. But ellie taft had ambitions to do something but her father sent her brothers to harvard and yale she decides to start teaching thinking ill never come out of society. This work stuff and she may not marry but taft adored her and respected her independence and made her his partner. She is partly responsible instead of the judicial route he was is on she help with the speeches and strategy and became an extraordinary first lady very activist concerned with working women she brought the cherry trees to washington created a public park with free concerts and incredibly sadly to alter his presidency two months after she went on he was ignored curated she fell collapsed with a devastating stroke she recovered her power of walking but never speaking sentences again he spent days and days to teach her stock phrases so she could participate but this absently contributed to his troubles as presidency and lastly tarbell watches the frustrations of her mother when their industry is hurt as an oil producer. Jd rockefeller comes in and undoes his business. Now they have to worry about the family economics so she pray she will never take husband. Does not ever become married and the most famous journalist of her era. She writes a standard oil expose she kept reporting that rockefeller would pay anyone to take her on trips around the world. [laughter] but still to balance home and family and work those choices are so much broader. It is so interesting they made a choice to fit their own needs and desires. They were indispensable into first ladies in very different ways. Wilson has a bunch of women. [laughter] he does. [laughter] i feel like queen for a day that old show the most pathetic and romantic story. Wilson had two wives. The first he met in georgia as a struggling lawyer in atlanta. He was a presbyterian minister son and met the daughter and they fell instantly in love. He was realizing he didnt have a career as a lawyer so he took up academia. So they began exchanging 3000 of the most passionate love letters i have ever read. Yes Woodrow Wilson. [laughter] they are almost hard to believe. Sexual, a viewing on revealing and emotional. Yes. Woodrow wilson its true. And let him believe in god. What does that mean. [laughter] she became a College President s wife and poured a lot of tea. She was a very good artist and painted extremely well and could of had a career as an artist and gave it up to be a proper wife. As the role of women was dictated back then and the most supportive wife there could be all the way to the white house and wine year into their living in the white house she dies. And the president was crushed. He could barely get out of bed he was so religious and did not talk about suicide but did save more than once he wish somebody would just shoot him. He couldnt deal with it. The very week she died a war broke out in europe now they are knocking on the door to see mr. President something is happening and we need you here. Secondly is that Woodrow Wilson was introduced to a very attractive young widow living in washington dc and over the course of the next year the president went according and had private dinners in the white house, always chaperoned and inviting on writing hundreds of the most passionate love letters you have ever read to this one. [laughter] the ones to ellen was puppy lov love. Now hes in his late fifties having his last stab at romance he would lose her and windsor and marys are within one year and now she is the most supportive president ial wife one could imagine. They never left each other side. Got to the point wilson used to walk to other departments of the government to stop in mrs. Wilson would go with him. She was trained in the memoranda he was writing and almost as though fate was dictating. Because after the war and wilson came back with the league of nations and the peace treaty going around the country to convince the American People they should convince the Republican Senate to ratify the treaty which the republicans did not want to do he collapsed and was rushed home to washington from the middle of the country and then a few days later he suffered a stroke. Here is where mrs. Wilson comes in. She and a handful of doctors engage what i consider the greatest white house conspiracy in history. Because three or four people decided they would never tell anybody the president had suffered a stroke. So for the last year and half of the Wilson Administration for all intents and purposes edith wilson became the first female president of the United States. She was making no decisions on her own she was merely a steward but nobody saw the president of the thousands who wanted to see him, nobody saw him without passing through mrs. Wilson. All the documents requiring signatures or memorandum memorandums, nothing appeared before the president s eyes until mrs. Wilson decided what and when he would act upon. She became a pretty supportive wife. I guess so. Letters, dont know what will happen in 200 years from now when we dont have those handwritten letters may be email would be saved but it staccato not in that language when people had the only means to communicate it is a treasure. One military aid to both teddy and taft and in those days they were with the president all the time when the break occurred he wrote letters every single day to his family that are gold and talks about how deep that rupture was for taft and recounted as teddy was talking him and this relationship was so strong. Finally he was supposed to take a trip in the spring of 1912 before the nomination began to heat up at the last minute teddy throwing his hat into the ring he said i cannot go taft needs me but he tells them he has canceled the shipping order and taft says you have to go. You will be back when they need you. He goes to europe for about four weeks and comes back on the titanic. Taft was stricken yet again because he felt he would miss this man. As the titanic was going down telling him that he had storage letters that they would be remembered someday. So just keep track of what you are writing to people so in 200 years you will have stuff for us. [laughter] take out a pen every now and then. [laughter] is different and we have shared this. The men we have written about and women wrote so beautifully it when you take the time to write, you compose a thought and put it into lovely language. When my question. Then we will open to the audience. President obama is having such a difficult time right now. So what advice would you are president give him . [laughter] you go first. [laughter] president wilson would say get to the president s room. Go there. Start a dialogue Woodrow Wilson had a Contentious Senate in the end and a contentious house of representatives. He didnt get everything he wanted to hear is what he engaged in, it was a sustained dialogue great years with a lot of consternation and argument and disagreement with an ongoing chat with these branches of the american government. That is something wilson believed in so strongly. And secondly its ironic because we have an image of us to figure. That wilson personalize the presidency. He wasnt afraid to go down to the congress he was willing to go there and do anything to open the conversation and had a Foreign Relations committee of the United States senate come to me in the white house. Lets do it but always keeping the dialogue going. I agree. In addition to going to congress it is using the tool of the white house. The congressman want to come there i know theres difficulties because the president is inviting republican because it want to risk to be seen because it looks like they are disloyal but there is Something Special about coming to the white house. Johnson would have the progressives in the middle of the night at 2 00 a. M. I hope i didnt wake you up the senator said no i was just lying in bed hoping my president would call. [laughter]