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This is Kickass News, I'm Ben Mathis.

Hi, I'm Ben Mathis. Welcome to Kickass News.

Since our nation's founding, eight men have succeeded to the presidency without being elected to it.

Only four of those men were re-elected and only one of them, Theodore Roosevelt,

would have been elected in his own right.

Yet each of these men, in one way or another, vastly changed our history for better or for worse.

A new book called Accidental Presidents, eight men who changed America,

explores the legacy of those vice presidents who made it to the highest office in the land,

only because their predecessors died and the power and limits of the American presidency in critical times.

Today, the author, Jared Cohen, comes on the podcast to talk about it.

He reveals that presidential succession wasn't clearly defined for most of America's history,

and for the first few decades, it wasn't even established if the vice president automatically became president

or simply acted as a placeholder.

He says most vice presidents were elevated to the Oval Office with great reluctance and a serious inferiority complex

with the notable exception of Teddy Roosevelt who could hardly contain his glee.

...