4/8: 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
⏱️ 6 minutes
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Summary
4/8: 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.
December 1920
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Batsu with David Patricia. His new book is 1920 the year of the six presidents. |
| 0:10.0 | The Republicans gather in Chicago as they have many times before a circus is just left town so you can imagine the flavor on the floor |
| 0:19.2 | It's a very hot even though it's June, very hot, and it's roasting, even Alice Roosevelt, who is |
| 0:27.4 | a woman who's used to being in the kitchen with the heat, given her tongue. |
| 0:32.0 | Even she acknowledges that it's so hot. The candidates are given |
| 0:36.0 | odds and David reproduces the odds is quite fun. You can live through it. |
| 0:40.0 | Hiram Johnson, the progressive from California who's cranky, has even money. |
| 0:45.0 | Leonard Wood, the man who's been Army Chief of Staff, TR's friends, the only physician |
| 0:51.2 | ever to become head of the Army. A political actor, certainly. the only |
| 0:55.0 | to become head of the army. A political actor certainly is given 7 to 5. |
| 0:56.0 | Frank Laudin of Illinois has given 8 to 5. |
| 0:59.0 | Then Herbert Hoover has 4 to 1 odds, 4 to 1 odds to be the Republican nominee and you have to search and |
| 1:05.8 | search and search and all the way down here you find Warren Harding so as |
| 1:09.8 | they gather Harding is successful in not acting as if he wants to be the |
| 1:16.6 | nominee. Actually David there was a remark that he made I shouldn't be spending all |
| 1:20.6 | this money on my headquarters if I don't really want it. |
| 1:24.0 | He really didn't want or didn't think he was going to be president. |
| 1:28.6 | So why was he running? |
| 1:30.0 | What was the what was the secret he had inside of him? |
| 1:33.8 | Well, I think one can always, you know, flatter a candidate |
| 1:38.0 | into a candidacy. |
| 1:39.1 | If somebody just on the street says, |
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