2/8: 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents by David Pietrusza (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 16 February 2024
⏱️ 7 minutes
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Summary
2/8: 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents by David Pietrusza (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/1920-Year-Presidents-David-Pietrusza/dp/0786721022
The presidential election of 1920 was one of the most dramatic ever. For the only time in the nation's history, six once-and-future presidents hoped to end up in the White House: Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, and Theodore Roosevelt. It was an election that saw unprecedented levels of publicity -- the Republicans outspent the Democrats by 4 to 1 -- and it was the first to garner extensive newspaper and newsreel coverage. It was also the first election in which women could vote. Meanwhile, the 1920 census showed that America had become an urban nation -- automobiles, mass production, chain stores, and easy credit were transforming the economy and America was limbering up for the most spectacular decade of its history, the roaring '20s. Award-winning historian David Pietrusza's riveting new work presents a dazzling panorama of presidential personalities, ambitions, plots, and counterplots -- a picture of modern America at the crossroads.
1900 TR office
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Batcha with David Patricia historian, author of 1920, the year of six presidents. |
| 0:12.0 | Roosevelt is dead. Terry Roosevelt is dead. |
| 0:13.6 | Teddy Roosevelt is dead. |
| 0:15.0 | Woodrow Wilson is perpetually frail and in denial. |
| 0:20.0 | We now have candidates in the Republican Party that are seen as second-raiders, but one has to be chosen in the convention that's meeting in June of 1920. |
| 0:32.1 | Wilson has fantasies and will be June of |
| 0:34.2 | being a candidate for the Democratic Party, but what about the Republicans? |
| 0:38.7 | This is seen as their year. |
| 0:40.4 | Wilson is stymied and the Democrats don't have a strong voice to appeal |
| 0:45.8 | to the modern East Coast and the modern Midwest. So we come to a man |
| 0:52.4 | named Warren G. Harding who is nobody's first choice, nobody's second choice. |
| 0:57.0 | How far down do we have to go, David, before he's the fifth or sixth choice? What do you think? |
| 1:02.0 | But be, fifth or sixth, yes, definitely. |
| 1:04.0 | And that's his strategy. |
| 1:05.5 | And that is the strategy of his pal and campaign manager, a guy named Harry Doherty, |
| 1:12.0 | who is from Ohio like Harding is and they are determined not to say boo |
| 1:19.2 | Really about any other contender in the Republican ranks or even to boost Harding too strongly to be too |
| 1:27.7 | vociferous on his qualifications, which are kind of light. |
| 1:34.8 | I think his main qualification, |
| 1:40.4 | he's a man in the middle, |
| 1:41.9 | and he's an accommodator. He's not always a |
| 1:46.0 | compromise or in a bad sense, but he gets along with people. He doesn't |
... |
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