Since then, he has written books on, may be best book on the United States senate, may be further maybe for the republican party. President taft, roosevelt, mckinley. Hes written the history of wyoming, the written history of the first lady. She is an extraordinary historian. On the back quotes modern american presidency which might be the one book you ought to have on the presidency. Original,st and most steve neal, compelling analysis , robert who is also been here, where achievements rare achievements, a pleasure, strong and provocative. Highly readable, refreshing, required reading. And last but not leaving, as i introduce our fred, a friend of the library, formerly professor at the university of texas, a wonderful writer. I want to read what Richard Norton smith says. Ould does not hesitate to offer sobering conclusions and i want to say i know he will stay sober tonight. Gentlemen, lewis gould. [applause] lewis gould thank you for that kind and generous introduction. It is always late to return to kansas city. As a native of your city once observed, kansas eddie, everyone has some kind of bell to tap from that town. Kemper and they library for inviting me back that a personal shout out to Nelson Atkins who is here for thethat he does to make collection of medieval manuscripts one of the best in the area. And seeing the orioles come back and maybe when the world series, its important to our oh go ahead. [applause] lewis gould its good to be shameless. It is appropriate to remember the president who has the tradition of during out the first all on opening day was when howard taft in 1910. If people know anything about William Howard taft they recall he is the only person to have been president of the United States and chief justice of the United States. He was president for a single 1913 and chiefto justice from 1921 to 1930, when he had to resign because of ill health. The other thing everyone remembers is that he was a large man, weighing 350 pounds by the end of his presidency. Fat jokes proliferated. How he gave up his seat to three women on the trolley, or the response when he proclaimed manelf a fit and virile after a horseback ride through the hills of the philippines. The secretary of war got the telegram and fired back how is the horse . [laughter] lewis gould now for all of his weight he was very light on his feet and i would guess he may have been the most gifted residential dancer of all the 40 odd chief executives. You might say what about Theodore Roosevelt . One woman said he danced the way you would expect it, he hopped. Bulk facts about tafts exhaust manys knowledge about him and really does anyone ask how he became the first chief justice as a former president and be a forgotten figure . And waitt sit around for judicial lightning to strike him. He spent the eight years between the end of his presidency and his nomination in 1921 by warren g. Harding, keeping himself in the public eye and reminding fellow republicans that he was available. ,hese eight years intrigued me just how did he recover from a disastrous presidency to be the logical choice for president warned jihad in warren g. Harding . Twixt the white house at Supreme Court which the university of kansas brought out last fall. The critics within your shot of the now retired and distinguished director of the odard, press, fred wo and his choice made it easy to search for the book on google. I believe this book belongs in every household in america. Unlike j. K. Rowling, stephen king, and john grisham, my book sales fall short of that goal. On the premise that some of you, i know very few, may not have read the book yet, let me tell taft, thet says about presidency, and the fate of former president s a century ago. As you shall see, the situation after he left office in 1913 reveals a great deal of how the presidency changed in the last century and though the theme is hail to the chief, there will be insight on how different the presidency was in 1909 to 1913. I have written three books about the taskfts. Helen when he was president. Saying it is true, we are not ashamed of it, we do it. Doing so has been a great personal pleasure. He was a constant letter writer dictating to his secretary and having to write to his wife and longhand because she didnt like typewriters, his letters fill hundreds of pages in the library of congress. Their gossipy, opinionated, and fun to read because Theodore Roosevelt said of him one of the best papers i ever knew. About therned president s into the 20th century, one thing to keep in mind as people talk about roosevelt and wilson and others is how different the presidency was then from now. How small the president ial office was in terms of people who worked for chief executive. Taft had 18 his secretary. He went through three of them. The white house is now in tens of thousands. There was no bureaucracy in our sense of the word. Moreover, the white house was accessible in ways that seem incredible in our modern age. If one had business with the president , you could simply walk up to the front door, state your business to the guards, and they would let you in if you are a President Senate it senator or commerce. No security check, no background check, you are just an average american and you had put business with the president. A journalist once told me, he was a young reporter, he got to the white house and lost his way and theater Theodore Roosevelt came down and directed him to the press office on the second floor. Mind that the bureaucracy and the pictures, the movies that show this white house is heavily armed, were not true in 1913. To give you a sense, president s still have annual receptions. The public could line up on new years day and walk in and shake cans with the president and tell him what you thought of him. And passing out the white house, thousands of people lined up. They thought of the president as the First Citizen of the land, he was no different from other citizens as a human being. The president was not seen as some exalted figure, but only that First Citizen, no better than the average person in the legal sense. Only with fdr and world war ii and the cold war that followed to the white house become the imposing safeguard, sometimes under assault in movies, complex that it is today. The president ial papers were much smaller, though they were large in number, then they are now. To give you kind of an example, Theodore Roosevelts papers on microfilm, 485 reels. For taft there is 658. For fdr there were 20 tons of material. Every president since has had more papers than all the previous president s combined taken together. You can see how the presidency has metastasized over the last century. Taft had been elected over democrat William Jennings bryan. Bryan running for the third time. When he lost he said i guess they dont want to let me in there. Taft was the designated political air of Theodore Roosevelt. The assumption was he would carry on roosevelts legacy, political reform, government regulation, strong presidency. Almost at once, things began to go wrong for taft as his party split over the tariff, conservation, and government regulation of the economy. In 1910, the republicans became divided over the speaker of the house. Uncle joe cannon of illinois, who is a very conservative man, he was said that if he had been present at the creation of the universe, he would have voted for chaos. [applause] worse yet for taft, the close friendship he had with roosevelt fell apart. By early 1912, roosevelt threw his hat into the ring and challenged taft with the gop president ial nomination. The race for the nomination became bitter and all traces of their former friendship were vanishing. At one point, taft said of his former friend, i am a man of peace, and i dont want to fight. When i do fight, i want to hit hard. Even a rat in a corner will fight. President ial rhetoric, 1912. Roosevelt described his successor as flabbing, a puzzle and a fat head. They did not give out each others phone numbers in those days, but they battled back and forth in the spring of 1912. At one point, taft subject to a recorder, roosevelt was my dearest friend. Roosevelt claiming that taft had stolen the prize from him, there was a dispute about the delegates. Roosevelt created his own thirdparty, the bull moose was a progressive party. For those of you who like your politics with a side order of religion, roosevelt famously proclaimed that he was going after the president we stand at , armageddon and we battle for the lord. The democrats nominated Woodrow Wilson, who had an easy road. Taft did not campaign. That was another variant from today. It was thought to be undignified for the sitting president to go out and actually ask for votes. Most incumbent president s simply issued a letter of acceptance, and then kept quiet. Only in 1916 would Woodrow Wilson go out on a stump and ever since then, as we know, president s campaigned like mad. When the votes were counted, the democrat had almost 42 of the popular vote, while taft and t. R. Split the rest. As a result, wilson won easily with 435 electoral votes. Roosevelt had 88 votes from six states and taft had utah and vermont. It was a crushing repudiation of an incumbent president. A century ago, inaugurations were held on march 4th. They were changed in the 1930s in the midst of the depression to january 20th to reduce the time between the election and the inauguration of the presidency, so you do not have lame ducks like herbert hoover. At noon, Woodrow Wilson took the oath of office and became president. Taft and nelly were driving to the local train station and they could hear the bands playing and the crowds cheering for the new president. Talk about a moment in your lives. The transition between taft and wilson have been very polite, businesslike, and conducted in a very civilized manner. Unlike our era, political opponents then good still behave with a modicum of civility and good manners towards each other. I think weve lost something, if you compare taft and wilson with recent events. Taft and nelly departed for augusta, georgia, where taft could recuperate from the rigors of the presidency by playing the golf he loved so much. He felt very gratified. Now, to understand what taft faced in march of 1913, as i begin my book, as an expresident , thinking about ex president s, you have to put out of your mind all moderate assumptions about former president s. Today, men such as bill clinton and george w. Bush have left office with pensions, staff, secret service protection, and magnificent president ial libraries like the harry truman library. To glad to join and welcome the fraternity of president ial libraries because historians, we need them. We live for them, we visit them and do research on them. They are an ornament in american civilization. So in our day, before a a former president that has everything that makes him resemble the white house without the power, of course, but its a very comfortable existence as bill clinton and george w. Bush could testify. On 1913, nothing like that march 4, existed for taft. A former president on noon of march 4 and he became a private citizen was again. There was no government income, as in nothing. No pension, nothing. No secret service protection, no staff, no office, and no expectation he would ever have such things. Taft saved 2000 a month from his 75,000 salary as president. But he did have enough money to didnt didnt have enough money to live on and he would have to earn a living on his own. He was just a private citizen with no special place in society that he did not create for himself. If he wanted a secretary, he would have to employ one for himself at his own expense. Protection, nothing. Even though roosevelt had been the victim of assassination attempt in october 1912. Nobody said, maybe we should protect former president s. Taft was on his own. Taft had been a lawyer and federal judge before entering Government Service in 1900. When he went to the philippines to create a Colonial Government there. He had been on the government payroll almost his whole life. At first he thought about practicing law back in his hometown of cincinnati, but problems soon arose. As president have to head appointed so many federal judges that if he went in the courts, conflict of interests were bound to occur. He was going to deal primarily with civil cases which would take him into the courts where he would face judges he had appointed. He was not going to defend the accused criminals. If you were expecting a new series called big bill taft for the defense starring john goodman, forget about it. If you make it happen, i want residuals. How would this former president who had been a lawyer all his life going to make a living . A welcome solution emerged even before he left the white house. He was offered a teaching position at yale, his alma mater, as the professor of law. He would teach undergraduate courses in constitutional law while at the same time instructing the students in the dangers of Theodore Roosevelts reform ideas. As he put it to the yale daily news, when the constitution is regarded so lively by a class of enthusiasts, who could he mean . Seeking shortcuts to economic perfection and unscrupulous demagogue, now we know, who are promoting disrespect for the fundamental document, someone had to speak out. Taft was that man. He said that the Yale Administration are disposed to let me do whatever i want as long as i except. For eight and a half years he , taught the boys at yale. He was a somewhat dry lecturer, except for when whatever he was saying reminded him of an incident of when he was secretary of war or president , often would go on a digression sprinkled with the famous taft belly laugh and the boys found him fascinating. For his part, taft regarded the shores of grading examinations a taxing one. But as he traveled around the country, he graded all the papers himself. I must not kick about it, he told a friend, because that is the lean of the professors life and i would not be satisfied to let anybody else do the work for me as some professors do. A personal confession when i , taught classes of 500 at a time at the university of texas, i did use graders. As he surveyed his students, taft decided, he had had so many teachers over the generations that there had been a falling off of the College Students and quality. He wrote an article entitled the college slouch. He deplored lack of direct in different manners and slouching dress among the students. If you look back at yale yearbooks from 1914 and 1915, you will wonder how these neatly dressed, very tweedy yaleys achieved it with slouchiness. You have to wonder what he was talking about, especially if you compare the almost clothing optional approach of modern students. He also threaded fretted when the yale was he knew consorted with the chorus girls who hung hotel taft in new haven. Charles was the rich taft and he supported bill throughout his career. These theatrical damsels were no better than they had to be, and taft warned the administration that the decline in moral values was imminent. Blending the yale boys with the hotel girls enabled in tafts words young men of the college to dissipate. Dances at the taft soon ceased. We think about it, we need to keep in mind that the same boys in four years later would be facing german machine guns in france and some wood life forever in flanders field. On the whole, taft liked living in new haven. Nelly could go into new york to go to the theater and shop for a day. Taft could mingle with the yale faculty. He loved golf, as ive said. He once played at a local for somewhere he came out on a good end. He stormed into the locker room, through his clubs on the floor, and snorted with rage. A watching professor said, you feel worse about being beaten at golf here than you did on losing the presidency. Taft responded, well i do now. Taft golfed in part to keep his weight down, something he struggled with all of his life. As i said, he had gone up to 350 pounds. When the president of yale suggested that he occupy a chair of law, taft applied, the chair might not be adequate. If they had a sofa, that my might work. While he took jokes about his weight in good part he realize , that he had really ballooned during his presidency. He ate a 12 ounce steak for breakfast every morning. Out of office he resolved to get his poundage under control. He had also neglected his health. He revealed to his friends that he had not seen the dentist in 25 years. When he left the white house in march 1913, taft was something of a physical mess. He soon embarked on his first serious diet since he had tried unsuccessfully to lose weight before he became president. He needed to do it. His Blood Pressure was dangerously elevated. He cut back on his intake of meat. That was it for eating steak. As he told the correspondent, i have dropped potatoes, my bill of fare, and also bred in all d in all of its forms. Wise advice. Over the course of 1913, his weight steadily declined until by december you had lost nearly 70 pounds and weighted 271 pounds. Nelly was ambiguous about this because she had to buy him all new clothes. He combined the diet with exercise at a local health farm and play golf regularly. He never again gained weight throughout his judicial career and died weighing about 270. To earn money, taft, in addition to his yale salary of 5,000, which was big money in those days, taft became a lecturer, crisscrossing the country to give talks on constitutional and political topics. The Railroad Network in those days was very efficient. He could speak as far away as iowa one evening and get back the next day in time to meet his class the next day in new haven. To travel, he was a traveling president , and the routine of lecturing was both fulfilling and very lucrative for him in those years. Per in about 1500 to 2000 appearance, which in todays money would be about 40,000 dollars, so he was doing all right. Having lost all but two states in his reelection bid, taft knew that his life as a political candidate was over. Still, he hoped to play some part in guiding the destinies of the grand old party. He was especially intent on blocking any attempts of the friends of Theodore Roosevelt to take the repub