#1238 Presidential Decorum
Listening to America
Listening to America
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 13 June 2017
⏱️ 59 minutes
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Summary
"I never like to be rude, but sometimes one has to set the precedent for a society that will shock the world."
— Thomas Jefferson, as portrayed by Clay S. Jenkinson
This week, we discuss diplomacy and presidential decorum. When the British Ambassador Anthony Merry came to the White House, Jefferson went out of his way to be rude: to make it clear that the Revolution was won by us, not them.
In 1792, Jefferson wrote to George Washington: "No government ought to be without censors: and where the press is free, no one ever will. If virtuous, it need not fear the fair operation of attack and defence. Nature has given to man no other means of sifting out the truth either in religion, law, or politics."
Find this episode, along with further recommended reading, on the blog.
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Thomas Jefferson is interpreted by Clay S. Jenkinson.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Good Day podcast listeners this week it's about presidential decorum which in fact is |
| 0:07.8 | hell mill madam. You know David let me ask you this question because in the essay that I wrote this weekend in much of our discussion the question is has there ever been a president of the |
| 0:18.1 | United States who exhibited less presidential decorum than President Trump. |
| 0:25.0 | It's not a rhetorical question. |
| 0:26.4 | What do you think? |
| 0:27.4 | From my limited knowledge, the answer is negative. |
| 0:30.2 | That's mine too. |
| 0:31.2 | I would almost want to talk to a presidential historian, although you're pretty good on that. |
| 0:36.0 | Well, you know, I've done my homework on this and so I think, well, who are they? |
| 0:40.0 | So Theodore Roosevelt could be rude. Not this way, but he was a name caller and a bully and he once |
| 0:47.8 | had a meeting with, there was an anthracite coal strike and he called in the coal operators and one of the coal |
| 0:53.9 | operators is George Bear of Pennsylvania. It was so arrogance and so dismissive of labor and so |
| 1:00.4 | unyielding in this meeting that Roosevelt had called, |
| 1:04.0 | that Roosevelt said, |
| 1:05.0 | I wanted to just chuck him out the window. |
| 1:08.0 | I wish kind of that he had. |
| 1:10.0 | But so you know, and so Andrew Jackson is maybe the best analogy. |
| 1:14.2 | Andrew Jackson was a bully and he was a dualist. |
| 1:17.5 | And he was a, he was kind of a populist with a capital P and a hard, an angry man and a very assertive one and when he has the most famous |
| 1:28.6 | inauguration in American history because people came in and trash the White House. |
| 1:33.8 | I don't think that could have happened with Donald Trump. |
| 1:36.8 | But he's probably the analogy. |
... |
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