8/8: 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents by David Pietrusza (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 22 February 2024
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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.
1920 DC
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Bachelor with David Prusha. The book is 1920, the year of the six presidents. |
| 0:10.8 | The six presidents contained decades. |
| 0:13.6 | We're talking about the early moments of the rise of Teddy Roosevelt |
| 0:19.2 | right after the Civil War and becoming prominent in the 1890s in New York and rising to the vice presidency because of course they wanted to get rid of him. |
| 0:31.6 | He was a troublesome progressive |
| 0:33.6 | Democrat Republican governor in in New York and the bosses found him extremely |
| 0:39.8 | uncomfortable making especially Tammany Hall. |
| 0:43.4 | He becomes president and then in dispute with Woodrow Wilson who wins because Teddy Roosevelt |
| 0:49.3 | breaks up the party and we get into the 1920s and now we're extending all the way into the |
| 0:53.6 | 1930s. Hoover is known as the great engineer. He was so effective as not being a |
| 0:59.6 | partisan that neither party could decide on him in 1920. |
| 1:04.0 | He will become president because Cal Kulich chooses not to run again. |
| 1:09.0 | And Hoover runs on the Republican line. |
| 1:11.0 | What made him move towards the Republicans? Had he always been a Republican, |
| 1:14.8 | David? Well, he'd been a Republican of sorts. He might have jumped to the Democrats, but he makes a statement |
| 1:21.2 | at one point that he takes a look at the Democratic Party and it's like, |
| 1:25.0 | ug. I don't want these racist southerners, these wild ass progressives in the Midwest, they're just too radical for me. |
| 1:36.0 | Or these crooks in the big cities. |
| 1:38.5 | I just don't feel comfortable with these guys. |
| 1:41.0 | I'm going to stick with the Republican Party and in 1920 it being |
| 1:45.3 | a Republican year maybe he just decided to see which way the wind was blowing. |
| 1:51.0 | He goes into the administration and he's very successful in |
... |
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