I'm Bob Crawford.

I'm Ben Sawyer.

And this is the road to now.

Welcome to 2025, everybody.

And it's like I always say, there's no better way to start a new year than with an episode about Martin Van Buren.

Bob's been saying that.

And I say that every year.

Bob goes collard greens, black eyed peas, Martin Van Buren. Bob's been saying that. And I say that every year. Bob goes, collard greens, black eyed peas, Martin Van Buren. That's Bob's three. That tends to be the way if you want to have a good year coming up, you study Martin Van Buren in the early days of the new year. Very fortunate, us and everyone listening right now, because here we go with it. We got Martin Van Buren,

a book, Bob, that I feel like in our conversations, when we talk about, you know, the mid-19th century,

this book has needed to be written for a long time because this is so much of this has been a conversation. They leave him out, right? And we started off with this being like, it's Bob's favorite

president. You've explained why.

Yes. And like I say, my favorites are Van Buren and John Quincy Adams, of course. Any president you can boil down to three, like NVB or JQA. I like that. These men were not great presidents, right?

They were extremely notable American figures who served as president, who served both of them,

one ill-fated term as president.

And so it's not that Martin Van Buren, his presidency needs to be in the top

10 because it's certainly not, but it's a matter of who this man was and what he did really

before he became president that makes him notable.

However, his post-presidency is also notable.

His post-presidency is interesting because he's, it's indicative of the breakdown of the

second-party system, right?

I mean, he is.

That he formed.

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