I'm John Bachelor David Petruche, his book is 1920 the year of the six presidents.

Cox and Roosevelt are on the campaign trail.

Harding eventually initially thinks he's going to run a front porch campaign like McKinley, but

he's a good speaker.

He's an orator. Although there was that remark about how his speeches, he calls

them bloviating, are in search of an idea. And when they find an idea, they take it prisoner

and it can never escape. So I take it prisoner and it can never escape so I take it that his speeches weren't

read from teleprompter he was what a spontaneous speaker did he have a script oh he

I'm not sure if he spoke from notes or not, but he made, I visited

his home in Marion, Ohio, finally. And I said, now how did he get such a nice sort of, how did he manage to travel to Europe and do all these things when he had this little teeny newspaper?

And the docent says because he went on the Chautauqua circuit and he earned quite a bit of money as a public speaker which is really interesting considering the horrible reputation he has as a public speaker, but he has a very nice voice, which sounds sort of modern.

You can listen to phonograph recordings of him, and he knows not to say anything which is going to get him into trouble

so he has a he has a certain charm about him.

There's a scene it's very very sad, but it's vivid, of Jimmy Cox and Frank Roosevelt going to meet with the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson. And Wilson's in a chair and I think he he's so frail it

frightens Cox and Roosevelt. Roosevelt shows up not in a suit which he wears on

other occasions I've seen many photographs of him. He's very handsome, six feet two blue eyes,

Slim, but he wears what a Navy, a Navy blazer, a Navy blazer and white pants to meet the president.

It struck me as odd.

Yeah, it doesn't seem to show the proper amount of respect of how people would dress back then. But he's like the

jaunty next generation of leadership or something or other. Cox takes the meeting a

hell of a lot more seriously and is is moved by that meeting and he comes away.

That's when he flips to being so pro-league of nations and to making the league a big issue for the Democrats in that campaign, which frankly is a mistake.

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