Welcome to Words Matter with Katie Barlow.

Welcome to Words Matter, I'm Katie Barlow.

Our goal is to promote objective reality.

As a wise man once said, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, not their own facts.

Words have power and words have consequences.

Our guest today is a best-selling author, a documentary filmmaker, a television producer,

an NBC news political analyst, a calmness and co-host of Sirius XM's Alter Family Politics.

Jonathan Alter's books on President Franklin Roosevelt and Barack Obama,

the defining moment, FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope, and the promise, President Obama Year One.

Detailed two chief executives who took office during times of extraordinary crisis.

His most recent book is His Very Best, Jimmy Carter, A Life.

Jonathan Alter, welcome to Words Matter.

Thanks, Katie. How are you?

I'm good. I'm excited to talk to you. I am a native Georgian.

I want to dig into the Jimmy Carter book, but given where we are in this moment in the history of presidential politics,

I want to start with your books on FDR and President Obama first, and their transitions into the White House at critical moments in history.

There's a belief in Washington, and among those who watched the presidency, the so-called lame duck period that were in,

the time between the presidential election and the inauguration, was shortened from the 17 weeks between the November election and March 4th to 11 weeks between Election Day and January 20th because of the disastrous transition between Herbert Hoover and FDR.

Is that true?

No. No, it was actually in the period just before that.

In the early 1930s, but before 1932, 33, that they changed that.

And it wasn't even that they anticipated that there was going to be a problem after the 1932 election.

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